DOCSLIB.ORG

Tragedy of the Global Commons: Causes, Impacts and Mitigation

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Tragedy of the Global Commons: Causes, Impacts and Mitigation Tragedy of the Global Commons: Causes, Impacts and Mitigation Katar Singh * ABSTRACT Global commons include such diverse things as space, climate, biodiversity, high sea marine fisheries, eco-systems and their services to human beings. They are all open access resources and are vulnerable to what Garret Hardin called “the tragedy of the commons”. This is evident from increasing incidence and severity of such climatic aberrations as global warming, acid rain, depletion of ozone layer, droughts, floods, cyclones, and hurricanes. All these climatic aberrations are caused mainly by human activity and partly by natural processes. But they all adversely impact on human wellbeing and the quality of our environment. But times of crises are also times of opportunity. There is now growing awareness of the need for adoption of active global policies to create more sustainable economic structures and processes to mitigate the adverse impacts of climatic aberrations on human wellbeing and avert the “tragedy of the global commons”. Consequently, several catch phrases such as green accounting, green gross domestic product, a global Green New Deal, low carbon economy and a green energy revolution have come into vogue and now find their way into governance and management of global commons. This paper attempts to characterise the nature of the problem of global commons, identify its root causes, assesses the impacts of the tragedy and propose a strategy for managing the global commons so as to minimise the adverse impacts of the tragedy. The strategy proposed comprises a mixture of market-based instruments and command and control measures. The paper is largely based on a review of the relevant literature available on the subject and partly on the empirical work done by the author over the last three decades or so. Key words : Global commons, ‘tragedy of the commons’, climate change, global warming, causes, impacts, strategy * Chairman, India Natural Resource Economics and Management (INREM) Foundation Anand-388 001, India E-mail: [email protected] 1 1. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND By global common pool resources (GCPRs), or simply global commons, we mean resources, or facilities, or services, which are or can be used in common by a number of countries in the world, or by several people in a country simultaneously. They include such diverse things as space, climate, biodiversity, eco-systems and their services, high seas and marine fisheries beyond the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) of nations, unpatented scientific discoveries and innovations, and global institutions such as the United Nations Organisation (UNO) and its sister institutions. They are all open access resources, i.e., resources which are everybody’s property and access to which is free and unrestricted. The problems of open access arise from the lack of ownership of the resource by any person or organisation. There is some truth in the conservative dictum that ” everybody’s property is nobody’s property” and hence open access is likely to be abused, misused, and over-exploited (Gordon, 1954: 135). In other words, they are subject to what Hardin (1968) called “the tragedy of the commons” Most of the GCPRs are under high biotic 1 and abiotic 2 pressures in most of the countries of the world, particularly the developing countries including India. They are misused, over-exploited, misappropriated and polluted. For example, in India, in 2000, about 20% of its total geographical area was degraded due to various reasons. Agricultural lands suffer from soil erosion, water-logging, salinity and general loss of fertility, making them less productive. Similarly, most of India’s rivers, lakes, tanks and ponds are polluted and the groundwater aquifers are over-exploited in most of its arid and semi-arid regions. Fishery yields have been declining year after year due mainly to indiscriminate fishing using mechanised trawlers equipped with very wide maws and radars (Singh, 2009:41-44). At the global level, there have been drastic changes in climate including such aberrations as increasing intensity of global warming, acid rain, depletion of ozone layer, and increasing frequency of occurrence of floods, droughts, hurricanes, cyclones, and eruption of volcanoes. Biodiversity is being lost at an almost unprecedented pace. Space is being crowded with satellites and polluted by sonic booms of supersonic aircraft. All those changes will bring about rapid and unpredictable changes in the earth’s entire biophysical system and adversely impact on human wellbeing. As a matter of fact, some of the ancient civilisations have disappeared due to the neglect of natural resources, particularly land and water resources. Famous British historian Toynbee (1939: 42-45) observed that it was the loss of command of physical environment, 1 The biotic factors affecting the GCPRs include high levels of human and domestic animal populations, their high density and rapid growth, high incidence of poverty, high level of illiteracy, high levels of emission of green house gases and high density of use of the space for various purposes. 2 Abiotic factors include floods, cyclones, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, and eruption of volcanoes. 2 which led to the breakdown of the civilisation of the Tigris river basin 3. There are thus massive indications of the tragedy of global commons caused partly by human activity and partly by natural factors. But times of crises are also times of opportunity. There have been many initiatives in the past at both national and international levels to mitigate the adverse impacts of climatic aberrations on human wellbeing and avert the tragedy of the global commons. But the measures adopted followed conventional lines of unsustainable technological and economic practices and weak institutional structures. So, wise use and management of land, water and other natural resources including environment at both the national and global levels is of critical importance for global sustainable development. The main objectives of this paper are to : (i) characterise the nature of the problem involved in using and managing the GCPRs; (ii) identify the root cause of the problem; (iii) assess the impacts of some of the climatic aberrations; (iv) identify some of the challenges and opportunities; and (v) propose a strategy for wise management of the global commons. The paper is partly based on a critical review of the literature available on the subject and partly on the author’s work spanning over the period of more than three decades. We begin with a characterization of the nature of the problem of degradation of GCPRs including environment and identification of its root cause. 2. THE PROBLEM OF GLOBAL COMMONS AND ITS ROOT CAUSE Although global commons include a wide variety of resources, they all face one common problem of how to coordinate the actions of individual user nations to attain an optimal rate of production or consumption for the world community as a whole. Need for coordination and management generally becomes apparent when the flow of benefits or services from a resource is insufficient to meet the demand of its users. The primary causes of the demand for products / services of a global common exceeding its supply are increase in human and animal populations, discovery of new uses for the resource and / or its products, development and availability of new technologies for exploiting the resource and for processing, transporting, and marketing its products, discovery of new markets, and launching of new international policies and programmes. Over a relatively short period of time when the demand is constant, a problem may occur due to the decline or deterioration in the supply of the resource caused by such factors as degeneration due to natural processes, destruction by natural and / or man-made calamities, lack of necessary maintenance, etc. (Singh 1994: 12). 3 The Tigris River is the eastern member of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, along with the Euphrates. The river flows from the mountains of southeastern Turkey through Iraq. 3 If the world community of users is unable to control the use of its commons under changing circumstances, destructive competition or conflict among the users is bound to follow, which eventually results in the depletion or degradation of the resources. Hardin (1968) characterised this eventuality as ‘the tragedy of the commons’. The logic underlying the tragedy is purely economic in nature and can be stated as: unregulated access to a global common pool resource creates a decision-making environment in which incremental private benefits to an individual nation from the increased use of the resource markedly exceed the incremental costs associated with the increased use. Under these circumstances, each rational consumer or user of a global common is motivated to consume or use more and more of the resource till the resource is completely destroyed or degraded as a result of collective and uncoordinated use by all the individual users. Thus, individual rationality leads to collective irrationality. The calculus of incremental or marginal private benefits markedly exceeding the incremental costs follows from the fact that, in the case of a GCPR, whereas an individual user nation can appropriate all the benefits resulting from its increased use of the resource, it bears only a small fraction of the incremental costs associated with its increased use; the incremental costs are shared by all the nations of the world community, implying the existence of an externality 4 in the use of the GCPR in question. Thus, the common pool problem is basically one of the existences of externality - a divergence between private cost and social cost of exploitation which eventually leads to either depletion or over-crowding or congestion (Friedman, 1971: 855). The problem is a manifestation of either the absence of exclusive private property rights or the breakdown of the structure of property rights, or institutional arrangements (Randall, 1975: 734). Hardin’s thesis of the ‘tragedy of the commons’ has since become the dominant paradigm of the exploitation of global commons resulting from their open access nature.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Climate Change and Human Health: Risks and Responses
    Climate change and human health RISKS AND RESPONSES Editors A.J. McMichael The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia D.H. Campbell-Lendrum London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom C.F. Corvalán World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland K.L. Ebi World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe, European Centre for Environment and Health, Rome, Italy A.K. Githeko Kenya Medical Research Institute, Kisumu, Kenya J.D. Scheraga US Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, USA A. Woodward University of Otago, Wellington, New Zealand WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION GENEVA 2003 WHO Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Climate change and human health : risks and responses / editors : A. J. McMichael . [et al.] 1.Climate 2.Greenhouse effect 3.Natural disasters 4.Disease transmission 5.Ultraviolet rays—adverse effects 6.Risk assessment I.McMichael, Anthony J. ISBN 92 4 156248 X (NLM classification: WA 30) ©World Health Organization 2003 All rights reserved. Publications of the World Health Organization can be obtained from Marketing and Dis- semination, World Health Organization, 20 Avenue Appia, 1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland (tel: +41 22 791 2476; fax: +41 22 791 4857; email: [email protected]). Requests for permission to reproduce or translate WHO publications—whether for sale or for noncommercial distribution—should be addressed to Publications, at the above address (fax: +41 22 791 4806; email: [email protected]). The designations employed and the presentation of the material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the World Health Organization concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.
    [Show full text]
  • Assessing Resource Depletion in LCA: a Review of Methods and Methodological Issues
    Assessing resource depletion in LCA: a review of methods and methodological issues Serenella Sala www.jrc.ec.europa.eu Serving society Stimulating innovation Supporting legislation Outline Sustainability and resources Key concepts and perspectives Review on current impact assessment methodologies for Resources 27 November 2012 2 Resources and sustainability -1 One of the father of the definition of “sustainability” was Hans Carl von Carlowitz. The concept was founded in forestry and was strictly resource-based and stayed so for centuries (Carlowitz 1713, Cotta 1828). The concept was developed by foresters because timber had been excessively overused and become a very scarce resource in the process of the industrial revolution and urbanisation. Carlowitz HC (1713)Sylvicultura oeconomica, oder haußwirthliche Nachricht und Naturmäßige Anweisung zur wilden Baum-Zucht 27 November 2012 3 Resources and sustainability _2 Around 1700, the mining industry and livelihood of thousands was threatened in Saxony. It was not that the mines had been exhausted of their ores, the problem was an acute scarcity of timber. The mining industry and smelting of ores had consumed whole forests. In the vicinity of places of mining activity the old growth forests had disappeared completely. Trees had been cut at unsustainable rates for decades without efforts to restore the forests. First, the river systems in the Erzgebirge was engineered, so logs could be transported from ever more distant forest areas, but these measures only postponed the crisis. The prices for timber rose ever more, which led to bankruptcy and closure of parts of the mining industry. 27 November 2012 4 Resources and sustainability _3 • Environmental as well as economic and social dimension • Interplay between socio-economic drivers, environmental and socio economic impacts Should resources be included in LCIA? Scientific debate For sure they should be part of the impact assessment in LCSA….
    [Show full text]
  • How Do the Extinctions of Other Creatures Affect Humans Directly?
    4/30/2020 How Do the Extinctions of Other Creatures Affect Humans Directly? How Do the Extinctions of Other Creatures Affect Humans Directly? ••• Updated March 10, 2018 By Milton Kazmeyer While extinction of animal species is part of the natural process of evolution, the expansion of the human species has led to significant increases in the extinction rate. Because humans share ecosystems with endangered species, our quality of life and our survival is linked to them. Habitat destruction, climate change, resource depletion and other factors have increased the extinction rate by a factor of 1,000, putting substantial pressure on thousands of the most vulnerable creatures on the planet. American Bison One example of how the depletion of a species affected humans is what occurred after the American bison nearly vanished in the 19th century. Originally, the bison was a common animal on the central plains, with an estimated population of 15 million, and the Native Americans of the region depended on the animal for food, leather, fur and many https://sciencing.com/extinctions-other-creatures-affect-humans-directly-20692.html 1/11 4/30/2020 How Do the Extinctions of Other Creatures Affect Humans Directly? other goods vital to a nomadic lifestyle. By 1890, however, there were only a few thousand bison left in America. Tribal hunters were able to kill more of the animals with the aid of firearms, and in some cases the United States government encouraged the widespread slaughter of bison herds. The vanishing species forced tribes dependent on the animal to move to new lands in search of food, and eventually those tribes could no longer support themselves and had to deal with the United States government for survival.
    [Show full text]
  • Global Environmental Issues and Its Remedies
    International Journal of Sustainable Energy and Environment Vol. 1, No. 8, September 2013, PP: 120 - 126, ISSN: 2327- 0330 (Online) Available online at www.ijsee.com Research article Global Environmental Issues and its Remedies Dr. MD. Zulfequar Ahmad Khan* Address Present. Permanent Address for Correspondence *Dr. Md Zulfequar Ahmad Khan 21-B, Lane No 3, Associate Professor Jamia Nagar, Zakir Nagar, Department of Geography & Environmental Studies New Delhi-110025 Arba Minch University INDIA Arba Minch, Ethiopia. Mobile No.: +919718502867 Mobile No: +251 923934234 E-mail: [email protected] _____________________________________________________________________________________________ Abstract To the surprise of many out-spoken environmentalists, it, in fact, turns out mankind and technology actually aren’t the only significant causes of global environmental problems. However, before we start to get too comfortable and confidently assume that we as human beings are officially “off the hook,” the fact remains that several “man-made” causes play a significant role in our current, global problems trend. Many human actions affect what people value. One way in which the actions that cause global change are different from most of these is that the effects take decades to centuries to be realized. This fact causes many concerned people to consider taking action now to protect the values of those who might be affected by global environmental change in years to come. But because of uncertainty about how global environmental systems work, and because the people affected will probably live in circumstances very much different from those of today and may have different values, it is hard to know how present-day actions will affect them.
    [Show full text]
  • Chapter 1 Ozone and Climate
    1 Ozone and Climate: A Review of Interconnections Coordinating Lead Authors John Pyle (UK), Theodore Shepherd (Canada) Lead Authors Gregory Bodeker (New Zealand), Pablo Canziani (Argentina), Martin Dameris (Germany), Piers Forster (UK), Aleksandr Gruzdev (Russia), Rolf Müller (Germany), Nzioka John Muthama (Kenya), Giovanni Pitari (Italy), William Randel (USA) Contributing Authors Vitali Fioletov (Canada), Jens-Uwe Grooß (Germany), Stephen Montzka (USA), Paul Newman (USA), Larry Thomason (USA), Guus Velders (The Netherlands) Review Editors Mack McFarland (USA) IPCC Boek (dik).indb 83 15-08-2005 10:52:13 84 IPCC/TEAP Special Report: Safeguarding the Ozone Layer and the Global Climate System Contents EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 85 1.4 Past and future stratospheric ozone changes (attribution and prediction) 110 1.1 Introduction 87 1.4.1 Current understanding of past ozone 1.1.1 Purpose and scope of this chapter 87 changes 110 1.1.2 Ozone in the atmosphere and its role in 1.4.2 The Montreal Protocol, future ozone climate 87 changes and their links to climate 117 1.1.3 Chapter outline 93 1.5 Climate change from ODSs, their substitutes 1.2 Observed changes in the stratosphere 93 and ozone depletion 120 1.2.1 Observed changes in stratospheric ozone 93 1.5.1 Radiative forcing and climate sensitivity 120 1.2.2 Observed changes in ODSs 96 1.5.2 Direct radiative forcing of ODSs and their 1.2.3 Observed changes in stratospheric aerosols, substitutes 121 water vapour, methane and nitrous oxide 96 1.5.3 Indirect radiative forcing of ODSs 123 1.2.4 Observed temperature
    [Show full text]
  • Plight, Plunder, and Political Ecology
    1 Plight, Plunder, and Political Ecology CIVIL STRIFE in the developing world represents perhaps the greatest international security challenge of the early twenty-first century.1 Three-quarters of all wars since 1945 have been within countries rather than between them, and the vast majority of these conflicts have oc­ curred in the world’s poorest nations.2 Wars and other violent conflicts have killed some 40 million people since 1945, and as many people may have died as a result of civil strife since 1980 as were killed in the First World War.3 Although the number of internal wars peaked in the early 1990s and has been declining slowly ever since, they remain a scourge on humanity. Armed conflicts have crippled the prospect for a better life in many developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia, by destroying essential infrastructure, deci­ mating social trust, encouraging human and capital flight, exacerbat­ ing food shortages, spreading disease, and diverting precious financial resources toward military spending.4 Compounding matters further, the damaging effects of civil strife rarely remain confined within the afflicted countries. In the past de­ cade alone tens of millions of refugees have spilled across borders, pro­ ducing significant socioeconomic and health problems in neighboring areas. Instability has also rippled outward as a consequence of cross- border incursions by rebel groups, trafficking in arms and persons, dis­ ruptions in trade, and damage done to the reputation of entire regions in the eyes of investors. Globally, war-torn countries have become ha­ vens and recruiting grounds for international terrorist networks, orga­ nized crime, and drug traffickers.5 Indeed, the events of September 11, 2001, illustrate how small the world has become and how vulnerable even superpowers are to rising grievances and instabilities in the de­ veloping world.
    [Show full text]
  • Global Commons: Between Cooperation and Competition by Gerald Stang
    17 2013 Photo by NASA / Rex Features (1568628a) Features / Rex NASA by Photo Global commons: Between cooperation and competition by Gerald Stang Rapid economic development and increasing inter- What exactly are the global commons? national trade are leading to a more crowded interna- tional stage and raising new challenges in the ‘global Security analysts generally identify four domains as commons’ – those domains that are not under the global commons: high seas, airspace, outer space control or jurisdiction of any state but are open for use and, now, cyberspace. From a security perspective, by countries, companies and individuals from around the primary concern is safeguarding ‘access’ to these the world. Their management involves increasingly domains for commercial and military reasons. complex processes to accommodate and integrate the interests and responsibilities of states, international It is important to highlight that this language differs organisations and a host of non-state actors. from the discourse on commons developed by envi- ronmental analysts: their arguments focus on dam- Shared rules regarding the usage of - and access to age to the ‘condition’ of the commons from overuse - the global commons encourage their peaceful and by actors who do not have to pay direct costs. They cooperative use. Over the last seven decades, the US worry about the depletion of shared resources such as has led in the creation of a liberal international order ocean fish stocks, or the damage to shared domains which has attempted to define these rules in such a such as Antarctica or the atmosphere. way as to make it easier and more beneficial to join the order and follow the rules than it does to operate A third strand of analysis looks not at the need for outside of (or undermine) it.
    [Show full text]
  • The "Tragedy of the Commons" in Plant Genetic Resources: the Need for a New International Regime Centered Around an International Biotechnology Patent Office
    Gulati: The "Tragedy of the Commons" in Plant Genetic Resources: The Need for a New International Regime Centered Around an International Biotechnology Patent Office Note The "Tragedy of the Commons" in Plant Genetic Resources: The Need for a New International Regime Centered Around an International Biotechnology Patent Office Chetan Gulati- The last several centuries have seen a transformation in the ways in which wealth is generated. As society has transformed itself in the post- industrial era, "knowledge" and "information," as opposed to land and physical property, have increasingly become the primary sources of wealth generation.1 For example, historically, it was ownership of the forest that was the principal channel for the derivation of riches. Today it is the possession of the patent in the pharmaceutical product derived from the leaves of the trees of the very same forest that is the fountain from which the greatest wealth springs. It is not surprising, therefore, that the strategy of wealth maximization has shifted from the desire to accumulate physical property to one in which the domination2 of intellectual property rights ("IPRs") has become preeminent. As already alluded to, the products derived from plant genetic resources ("PGRs")3 are major sources of wealth generation for developed t J.D., Yale Law School, expected 2002. I am grateful to Professor Gideon Parchomovsky for his guidance and valuable commentary. I should also thank my colleagues at the Yale Law School, especially Saema Somalya, Jean Tom and the other editors of the Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal, without whose constant challenge to my ideas, this project would never have come to fruition.
    [Show full text]
  • Environmental Effects of Ozone Depletion and Its Interactions with Climate Change: 2010 Assessment
    University of Wollongong Research Online Faculty of Science - Papers (Archive) Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health 2010 Environmental Effects of Ozone Depletion and its Interactions with Climate Change: 2010 Assessment Sharon A. Robinson University of Wollongong, [email protected] Stephen R. Wilson University of Wollongong, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/scipapers Part of the Life Sciences Commons, Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons, and the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons Recommended Citation Robinson, Sharon A. and Wilson, Stephen R.: Environmental Effects of Ozone Depletion and its Interactions with Climate Change: 2010 Assessment 2010. https://ro.uow.edu.au/scipapers/456 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] Environmental Effects of Ozone Depletion and its Interactions with Climate Change: 2010 Assessment Abstract This quadrennial Assessment was prepared by the Environmental Effects Assessment Panel (EEAP) for the Parties to the Montreal Protocol. The Assessment reports on key findings on environment and health since the last full Assessment of 2006, paying attention to the interactions between ozone depletion and climate change. Simultaneous publication of the Assessment in the scientific literature aims to inform the scientific community how their data, modeling and interpretations are playing a role in information dissemination to the Parties
    [Show full text]
  • Using Game Theory to Develop Sustainability Strategies in an Era
    ering & ine M g a n n E a Seifi and Crowther, Ind Eng Manage 2018, 7:1 l g a i e r m t Industrial Engineering & DOI: 10.4172/2169-0316.1000240 s e u n d t n I Management ISSN: 2169-0316 Research Article Open Access Using Game Theory to Develop Sustainability Strategies in an Era of Resource Depletion Shahla Seifi and David Crowther* Faculty of Business and Law, De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester, LE1 9BH, UK *Corresponding author: David Crowther, Faculty of Business and Law, De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester, LE1 9BH, UK, Tel: +44(0)7971629198; Fax: +44(0)1332720660; E-mail: [email protected] Received date: 02 November 2017; Accepted date: 07 March 2018; Published date: 14 March 2018 Copyright: © 2018 Seifi S, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Abstract Objective: Sustainability is recognized as an important objective in business planning and is of equal relevance to policy makers. It is equally accepted, almost universally, that the resources of the planet are finite and are being over consumed on an annual basis. The prognosis therefore is that resources are being depleted and competition for access to remaining resources must ensue, as countries seek to grow and develop. This will have the effect of increasing the transaction costs of business activity as they find greater difficulty in seeking restricted supply of resources.
    [Show full text]
  • Sustainability and Common-Pool Resources: Alternatives to Tragedy
    PHIL & TECH 3:4 Summer 1998 Carpenter, Common-Pool Resources/36 SUSTAINABILITY AND COMMON-POOL RESOURCES: ALTERNATIVES TO TRAGEDY Stanley R. Carpenter, Institute of Technology ABSTRACT The paradox that individually rational actions collectively can lead to irrational outcomes is exemplified in human appropriation of a class of goods known as "common-pool resources" ("CPR"): natural or humanly created resource systems which are large enough to make it costly to exclude potential beneficiaries. Appropriations of common-pool resources for private use tend toward abusive practices that lead to the loss of the resource in question: the tragedy of the commons. Prescriptions for escape from tragedy have involved two institutions, each applied largely in isolation from the other: private markets (the "hidden hand") and government coercion (Leviathan). Yet examples exist of local institutions that have utilized mixtures of public and private practices and have survived for hundreds of years. Two problems further exacerbate efforts to avoid the tragic nature of common- pool resource use. One, given the current level of knowledge, the role of the resource is not recognized for what it is. It is, thus, in a fundamental, epistemological sense invisible. Two, if the resource is recognized, it may not be considered scarce, thus placing it outside the scrutiny of economic theory. Both types of error are addressed by the emerging field of ecological economics. This paper discusses common pool resources, locates the ambiguities that make their identification difficult, and argues that avoidance of a CPR loss is inadequately addressed by sharply separated market and state institutions. When the resource is recognized for what it is, a common-pool good, which is subject to overexploitation, it may be possible to identify creative combinations of public and private institutions that can combine to save that resource.
    [Show full text]
  • Effectiveness of Houseplants in Reducing the Indoor Air Pollutant
    as a result of increased input of the Effectiveness of Houseplants in Reducing precursors of ozone into the atmos- the Indoor Air Pollutant Ozone phere (Mustafa, 1990). Automobiles are the principal contributors to sec- ondary tropospheric ozone genera- Heather L. Papinchak1, E. Jay Holcomb2,4, tion (Maroni et al., 1995). Teodora Orendovici Best3, and Dennis R. Decoteau2 Ozone as an indoor air pollutant can be prevalent in homes and offices due to infiltration of outdoor ambient ADDITIONAL INDEX WORDS. mitigation, depletion rates, foliage air indoors (Weschler, 2000). Ozone- emitting equipment such as copy UMMARY Sansevieria trifasciata S . Three common indoor houseplants, snake plant ( ), machines, laser printers, ultraviolet spider plant (Chlorophytum comosum), and golden pothos (Epipremnum aureum), were evaluated for their species effectiveness in reducing ozone concentrations in a lighting, and some electrostatic air simulated indoor environment. Continuously stirred tank reactor (CSTR) chambers purification systems may also contrib- housed within a greenhouse equipped with a charcoal filtration air supply system ute to indoor ozone levels (Maroni were used to simulate an indoor environment in which ozone concentrations could et al., 1995; Weschler, 2000). Ozone be measured and regulated. Ozone was injected into the chambers and when generation from appliances such as concentrations reached 200 ± 5 ppb, the ozone-generating system was turned off photocopiers on average yield 5.2 and ozone concentrations over time (ozone was monitored every 5–6 min in each mgÁh–1 and laser printers on average chamber) were recorded until about <5 ppb were measured in the treatment produce 1.2 mgÁh–1; however, con- chamber. On average, ozone depletion time (time from when the ozone generating centrations could vary based on < system was turned off at 200 ppb to 5 ppb in the chamber) ranged from 38 to equipment maintenance (Black and 120 min per evaluation.
    [Show full text]