The Tragedy of the Commons

After seeing how successfully the Balinese share the water supply for irrigation, we took a look at how the tragedy of the commons can arise. We used straws as fishing poles, puffed rice as fish, and large bowls as oceans to simulate the challenges of managing fish populations in our oceans. In groups of 4 or 5, students all started with an equal number of fish. With a healthy supply of small fish and a small supply of larger and endangered Tuna, their instructions were that for each fishing “season” of 20 seconds each person in their group needed to catch 2 fish in order to feed their family.

Anything over that limit they could sell. Once they had made money, they could use it to buy fish in the event that they didn’t catch enough to eat next season. For every fish left in their ocean at the end of the season, another fish would be added to simulate reproduction. By the end of 4 seasons, one ocean was out of fish, another didn’t have enough to feed everyone for the next season, and yet another had only enough for one more season. One ocean, however, had a healthy supply of both the small fish and the once endangered Tuna not to mention a bit of money in the bank. How did they do it? Communication and planning! This helped them avoid the trap of other groups who simply started catching as many as possible, caught up in the idea of selling only to find the market soon saturated and very few buyers for their soon to be rotting fish.

Ask you child how there group’s ocean looked at the end of the day.
source:http://blog.greenschool.org/blog/2011/09/28/the-tragedy-of-the-commons/

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