Climate Change Will Kill Sovereignty As We Know It

Context: The era of climate change will change international relations beyond recognition.

Evolution of the idea of sovereignty

• Peace of Westphalia, 1648: Put forward a realist notion by acknowledging sovereignty and the system accepted that countries pursue their national interests, which tend to clash.
• These ideas enshrined in Charter of the United Nations: Absolute sovereignty notion that foreign countries have no right “to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.”
• Principle of sovereignty was never absolute or uncontroversial: Humanitarian counterargument to sovereignty – Countries have not just the right but the duty to intervene in other states if, say, those are committing atrocities such as genocide.

New threats to sovereignty

• Ideas put forth by thinkers such as Stewart Patrick: In a world where all countries collectively face planetary emergency of global warming, sovereignty is simply no longer a tenable concept.
• Collective interest over national interest: A carbon dioxide molecule emitted in China, the US or India will waft who-knows-where and accelerate climate change everywhere. It will flood cities in Germany, burn forests in Australia, starve people in Africa and submerge islands in the Pacific.
  • All the world’s people, therefore, have a legitimate interest in the greenhouse gases emitted in any given jurisdiction.
  • Ecocide: In 2019, Brazil allowing fires to burn wide swathes of the Amazon rainforest. Is a rainforest located in Brazil the business of Brazil or of the world?
• Rising new types of conflicts: Including wars over access to freshwater, the disappearance of arable land or mass migrations.
  • Some powers or alliances will in the future contemplate military interventions in other states to end what they will define as ecocide.
  • Others may even go to war if they believe rival countries are taking unilateral measures against climate change that threaten their own interests.
  • America spraingy huge quantities of aerosols into the stratosphere may cool earth but trigger changes in weather patterns and rob other countries of their livelihood.

Way Forward: Time to think about the demise of sovereignty is now

• An ecological equivalent to what the World Trade Organization is to commerce: A new international body that makes the conundrum explicit and attempts to maintain order.