All Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension (VARC) Practice

All Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension (VARC) 4 / 557

The following five sentences, labeled 1 to 5, relate to a single topic. Four of these sentences can be arranged to form a logical paragraph. Identify the sentence that does not fit with the others and enter its number as your answer.

1. The 'tragedy of the commons' articulates a paradoxical scenario where rational individual actions, pursued in self-interest, inevitably lead to the collective depletion or degradation of a shared, finite resource.
2. Each rational actor perceives a marginal benefit from increased exploitation, while the ecological cost of this increased use is diffused across the entire community, thereby incentivizing over-consumption.
3. Consequently, without effective institutional checks, the open-access nature of such resources fosters an economic dynamic that drives them towards inevitable collapse, despite every individual being aware of the looming danger.
4. A significant body of research, notably by Elinor Ostrom, has extensively documented how local communities can spontaneously develop intricate, enduring systems for sustainable resource management, challenging the inevitability of this tragedy under certain conditions.
5. This systemic failure is profoundly evident in global environmental concerns, ranging from atmospheric pollution and ocean overfishing to rampant deforestation, where shared planetary resources are progressively exhausted by uncoordinated individual pursuits.

Correct Answer: 4
Identification of the Theme: The core argument defines and elucidates the mechanism and consequences of the 'tragedy of the commons' in the context of environmental resource depletion.
Logical Sequence of the Coherent Paragraph: 1-2-5-3.
Sentence 1: Introduces the central concept of the 'tragedy of the commons' as a paradoxical outcome of individual rationality.
Sentence 2: Explains the underlying mechanism by detailing the individual incentives for over-exploitation and diffused costs.
Sentence 5: Provides concrete environmental examples where this systemic failure is observed, illustrating its real-world impact.
Sentence 3: Concludes by reiterating the consequence of this dynamic: the inevitable collapse of open-access resources without external regulation.
Why Sentence 4 is the Odd One Out: While Sentence 4 is topically related to environmental resource management and the tragedy of the commons, it shifts the focus from describing the problem and its mechanisms to discussing potential solutions and alternative governance models. The other four sentences collectively establish the nature of the tragedy and its inevitable negative outcomes, whereas Sentence 4 introduces a different aspect by presenting evidence that challenges the universal inevitability of the tragedy through successful community-based management, thus focusing on remedies rather than the problem's inherent dynamics.

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