Territory, self-determination, and climate change: Reflections on Anna Stilz’s Territorial Sovereignty: A Philosophical Exploration
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https://hdl.handle.net/10037/21120Dato
2020-10-02Type
Journal articleTidsskriftartikkel
Peer reviewed
Forfatter
Heyward, Jennifer ClareSammendrag
It is not possible to do justice to any, let alone all of Stilz’s ideas in the space of a short commentary. Instead, I consider what Stilz’s theory has to say about how to conceive of and respond to the phenomenon of global climate change. This might seem strange to people who conceive of climate change entirely as a matter of what is going on in the atmosphere. However, climate change will not only have potentially severe impacts upon the land surface, but might, if unchecked lead to certain states, namely some of the Small Island States (SISs) losing their territory due to sea level rise. Moreover, significant proportions of the earth’s carbon sinks are located in the land and seas of different countries. To keep atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs) at a manageable level, it is necessary to maintain (even create) carbon sink capacity as well as to reduce GHG emissions (e.g., by reducing fossil fuel consumption). Indeed, Stilz devotes some time in her book to both these issues. Chapter 6 discusses the rights of SISs should they become uninhabitable, and chapter 8 is devoted to management of carbon sinks. The latter half of this commentary will focus on this discussion of forest management. Before then, I wish to propose an extension to Stilz’s basic theory. In this first half of this commentary, I will suggest that as well as the “right of occupancy,” the interest in “located life plans” justifies a second pre‐institutional right. I will call this the right against nonspatial removal (right against NSR).2 The case for this right begins in the next section.