Limited Natural Resources Turns Into Prisoner’s Dilemma
As the wildfires on the West Coast continue to burn record breaking acres of land and hurricanes continue to flood homes on the East Coast, climate change remains as one of our nation’s top concerns. With many growing efforts to become more sustainable and tackle the issue of climate change, one solution is to reduce and limit the amount of natural resources people consume. For example, the fishing industry has made efforts in regulating fishermen’s catch in reaction to the rapidly declining fish population over the years caused by overfishing at a level pass the maximum sustainable yield. To increase the fishing population, every fisherman must comply to decrease their catch for a period of time in order for the fish to recover. However, many fishermen take into account their personal interests and gains and decide to go against government rules, making this situation into a prisoner’s dilemma.
From a fisherman’s perspective, if every fisherman were to comply and have a smaller catch than in previous years, the fish population will grow and give opportunities for the fisherman to have bigger catches in the future. If the fisherman decides to continue fishing the same amount while his competitors decide to reduce the size of their catches, then the fisherman individually benefits, and the fish population will recover overall (since one fisherman’s over catch will not have a large impact). However, if the fisherman were to fish less while the others continue to catch the same amount, then the fisherman would be losing since other fishermen would have more fish to sell. If none of them were to comply about having smaller catches, then fish would become extinct and everyone loses. So, it is every fisherman’s dominant strategy to continue overfishing but this would cause the whole fishing industry to be worse off.
To prevent fishermen from using their dominant strategy there are many ways the government tries to incentivize fishermen to reduce their catch. For example, the government can impose a fine for those that choose to overfish in hopes to steer the fishermen away from using their dominant strategy of overfishing. The government can also pay the fishermen to stop their large catches by paying the difference in how much a fisherman would normally get by over catching and the amount he would get by fishing at the regulated amount. These are just a few of many solutions that the government can enforce as well as some ways to help solve the bigger issue of climate change.
Link:
https://bowseat.org/gallery/what-can-be-done-if-climate-change-is-a-prisoners-dilemma/