Global commons and shared responsibility

Commons are resources that are shared, not owned by anyone in particular, like a village pond or grazing ground.

Global commons lie outside the control of any single state, so they must be managed by the world together. The four main ones:

• the Earth's atmosphere;
• Antarctica;
• the ocean floor (beyond national waters);
• outer space.

Because no one owns them, everyone is tempted to use them and no one feels responsible for protecting them. So agreements are needed:

Antarctica is the largest wilderness on Earth. Seven countries claim parts of it, while others say it is a global commons. In practice, its use is limited to scientific research, fishing and tourism, under strict rules.

Who should pay? This is the North–South debate:

• The North wants everyone to share the work of protecting the environment equally.
• The South says the North caused most of the damage by industrialising first, so it must do more. Developing countries also need room to grow.

The Rio Declaration accepted the South's idea of 'common but differentiated responsibilities': all countries share the duty, but the developed countries carry a bigger share.

So the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) of 1992, and its Kyoto Protocol of 1997 (agreed in Kyoto, Japan), set greenhouse gas reduction targets only for the industrialised countries.