Overview

As an undergraduate Economics teacher, you can use this set of computer-based tools to help you in teaching the concept of the tragedy of the commons. This lesson plan will help students to understand the concept of tragedy of the commons, and to identify the “commons” and the “tragedy” in some example problems. In the activity, students will examine climate change as a tragedy of the commons and will discuss possible economic solutions (policy, development) for the problem.

Thus, the use of this lesson plan allows you to integrate the teaching of a climate science topic with a topic in Economics.

Grade Level: Undergraduate
Discipline: Economics
Topics in Discipline: Tragedy of the Commons, The Economics of Climate Change
Climate Topic: Energy, Economics, and Climate; Policy, Politics, and Environmental Governance
Location: Global
Languages: English
Access: Online, offline

Learning Outcomes

The tools in this lesson plan will enable students to :

• describe tragedy of the commons
• provide examples of tragedy-of-the-commons problems
• identify the commons and the tragedy in a given tragedy-of-the-commons problem
• examine climate change as a tragedy-of-the-commons problem
• propose economic solutions (policy, development) for the climate change tragedy-of-the-commons