What are ‘global commons’? Why is it said that international cooperation over the global commons is not easy?

● Global commons of the world are those areas or regions which are located outside the sovereign jurisdiction of any one state and therefore require common governance by the international community.

● For example, Antarctica, the ocean floor, the earth's atmosphere, and outer space.

It said that international cooperation over the global commons is not easy due to the following reasons:

● It is not easy to cooperate with global commons.

● Many such agreements were formed for the protection of global commons such as the Antarctic Treaty in 1959, the Montreal Protocol in 1987 and the Antarctic environmental Protocol in 1991.

● A common issue that existed in all the environmental issues were related to the difficulty of achieving consensus on common agenda on the basis of vague scientific evidence and timeframes.

● The discovery of the Ozone hole over the Antarctic in the mid-1980s is revealed the opportunity and the dangers inherent in tackling global environmental problems. Similarly, the history of outer space as a global common is thoroughly influenced by the northern and Southern inequalities.

● Earth's atmosphere and the ocean floor has the main issue of Technology and industrial development.

● This is important because the benefits of exploitative activities in outer space are far from being equal either for the present or future generations.