Given below are two statements:

Statement I: Commons are those resources which are not owned by anyone but rather shared by a community.
Statement II: Co-operation over the global commons is not easy. There have been many path-breaking agreements such as the 1959 Antartica treaty, the 1987 Montreal Protocol and the 1991 Antarctica Environmental Protocol.

In the light of the above statements, choose the most appropriate answer from the options given below:

Both Statement I and Statement II are correct

The correct answer is Option 1 - Both Statement I and Statement II are correct

Statement I: Commons are those resources which are not owned by anyone but rather shared by a community.
Statement II: Co-operation over the global commons is not easy. There have been many path-breaking agreements such as the 1959 Antartica treaty, the 1987 Montreal Protocol and the 1991 Antarctica Environmental Protocol.

EXPLANATION:

Commons’ are those resources which are not owned by anyone but rather shared by a community. This could be a ‘common room’, a ‘community centre’, a park or a river. Similarly, there are some areas or regions of the world which are located outside the sovereign jurisdiction of any one state, and therefore require common governance by the international community. These are known as res communis humanitatis or global commons. They include the earth’s atmosphere, Antarctica, the ocean floor, and outer space. 

Cooperation over the global commons is not easy. There have been many path-breaking agreements such as the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, the 1987 Montreal Protocol, and the 1991 Antarctic Environmental Protocol. A major problem underlying all ecological issues relates to the difficulty of achieving consensus on common environmental agendas on the basis of vague scientific evidence and time frames. In that sense the discovery of the ozone hole over the Antarctic in the mid-1980s revealed the opportunity as well as dangers inherent in tackling global environmental problems.