'Tragedy of the Commons' and 'Tragedy of the Horizon': distant cousins or identical twins?

摘要

In a speech given at Lloyd's of London in 2015 by Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England and Chairman of the Financial Stability Board, relating to climate change and financial stability, we were introduced to what Carney termed the 'Tragedy of the Horizon'.~1 The aim of this article is to explore the extent to which this phenomenon is related to its better-established counterpart, the 'Tragedy of the Commons', as Hardin's paper on the latter passes its half century.2 The Tragedy of the Commons is now such an established concept that it permeates the literature on environmental law and management and the basic concept is familiar to all who have an interest in this field. It is that familiarity with the central principle of the original thesis, however, that can lead us to overlook some of the finer detail of Hardin's paper and imagine that its teaching is only applicable to the degradation or loss of environmental common goods. In an earlier paper examining the transferability of learning from regulatory failures in the financial sector that resulted in the 'Credit Crunch' of 2007 and beyond, to the field of environmental regulation, Sullivan demonstrated that there were a surprising number of areas of commonality between the implementation of the regulatory regimes of the two sectors, and their respective potential for abuse or failure.3 This paper seeks to extend that original analysis to seek a better understanding of how the 'tragedies' of the environmental and financial sectors are related, and, on that basis, whether the long history of evidence regarding the tragedy of environmental commons has the potential to offer any insights into the role regulation may play in averting the tragedy of the financial horizon.