The Cobra Effect: When Solutions Make Problems Worse
Business lessons from botched decisions to kill cobras and control air pollution.
In November 1989, Mexico City introduced a car rationing scheme to curb air pollution. The city’s government prohibited 20 percent of the vehicles from plying on the roads between Monday and Friday based on the last digit of their license plates.
Initial studies showed the project was successful. Eventually, the well-intentioned scheme steered out of control. To bypass the restriction, people bought more cars, many of which were highly polluting used cars. The air quality and traffic congestion worsened.
Three years later, the UN declared Mexico City the most polluted city on the planet. Research showed that the increased number of vehicles made carbon levels rise by 13 percent.
This is an example of the Cobra Effect, where an attempted solution to solve a problem leads to unintended consequences that make it worse.
The term originated from an incident during the colonial rule of the British in India. The British administration worried about the number of venomous snakes in Delhi and declared a bounty for every dead cobra. The strategy succeeded initially as people brought in dead snakes in large numbers.
