New territorial rights for sinking island states
| Author | Kim Angell |
| Published date | 01 January 2021 |
| Date | 01 January 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1474885117741748 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
E J P T
European Journal of Political Theory
2021, Vol. 20(1) 95–115
New territorial rights for
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sinking island states
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885117741748
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Kim Angell
University of Oslo, Norway
Abstract
Anthropogenic climate change is an existential threat to the people of sinking island
states. When their territories inevitably disappear, what, if anything, do the world’s
remaining territorial states owe them? According to a prominent ‘nationalist’ approach
to territorial rights – which distributes such rights according to the patterns of attach-
ment resulting from people’s incorporation of particular territories into their ways
of life – the islanders are merely entitled to immigrate, not to reestablish territorial
sovereignty. Even GHG-emitting collectives have no reparative duty to cede territory, as
the costs of upsetting their territorial attachments are unreasonable to impose, even on
wrongdoers. As long as they allow climate refugees to immigrate, receiving countries
have done their duty, or so the nationalist argues. In this article, I demonstrate that the
nationalist’s alleged distributive equilibrium is unstable. When the islanders lay claim to
new territory, responsible collectives have a duty to modify their way of life – gradually
downsizing their territorial attachments – such that the islanders, in time, may receive a
new suitable territory. Importantly, by deriving this duty from the nationalist’s own
moral commitments, I discard the traditional assumption that nationalist premises
imply a restrictive view on what we owe climate refugees.
Keywords
Attachment, climate refugees, nationalism, reparative duties, sinking island states,
supersession, territorial rights
Introduction
Climate refugees1 from sinking island states will soon be a (sadly) familiar phe-
nomenon. Engulfed by rising sea levels, the people of states like Kiribati and the
Maldives will be compelled to move sometime during this century. What, if any-
thing, do the people of the world’s remaining territorial states – especially the
industrialized ones – owe them? As a minimum, I shall take it, the climate refugees
are entitled to a safe haven (and eventually citizenship) somewhere on dry land
Corresponding author:
Kim Angell, Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, PO Box 1097, Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway.
Email: kim.angell@stv.uio.no
96
European Journal of Political Theory 20(1)
(Miller, 2007; Risse, 2009). But are they also entitled to something further? When
the inevitable happens, should the islanders be granted some degree of intra-state
political autonomy? Or do they perhaps have even more demanding claims, to
reestablish themselves as a fully sovereign group in control of a new territory?
In this article, I will explore these questions from the perspective of a class of
theories that have become prominent in the ongoing debate on the justification of
territorial rights. For present purposes, territorial rights refer to rights of jurisdic-
tion (to make and enforce law) on a territory, to control its natural resources, and
to control movements of persons and goods across its borders (Miller, 2012: 253).
When justifying (one or more of) these rights, what I shall call nationalist attach-
ment theories appeal to how the particular geographical space over which a collect-
ive’s territorial rights are claimed has become incorporated into the shared ways of
life and identity of its members (see e.g. Gans, 2008: 25–51; Meisels, 2009: 126–130;
Miller, 2007: 201–230; Miller, 2012). This incorporation process is typically a
mutually formative experience. People may change the territory to conform to
their preferred ways of life and identity.2 But their preferences may also adapt
to the opportunities offered in their geographical surroundings (Miller, 2007:
217–218). At any rate, the result is the development of a distinct territorial attach-
ment shared by the collective’s members. Insofar as people have a significant inter-
est in being left free to determine the shape of their own lives, there is moral reason
for non-interference with existing attachments (Waldron, 1992: 16–20).3 It is worth
emphasizing that individual members of a collective will typically have various
personal, or non-shared, attachments to (parts of) the claimed territory.4 On the
kind of attachment theories I consider here, however, what matters for grounding a
collective’s territorial rights is people’s interests as members of the collective in
sustaining their shared attachment.5
Although the attachment-based claim to territory has significant weight, it is
not absolute. According to David Miller, a prominent and typical representative
of nationalist attachment theories, the state’s territorial right of border control,
for example, may be overridden in cases where outsiders must enter the state in
order to secure their basic human rights (Miller, 2007: 221). (Due to its promin-
ence in the debate, I will refer especially to Miller’s work when developing my
thesis; I expect my analysis to have import, however, for nationalist attachment
theories more generally.)6 There is a positive duty of justice, which falls on any
capable agent, to provide others with the basic human rights they need to live
what Miller (2007: 181) calls ‘a minimally decent life’. But as long as the basic
human rights proviso is satisfied, territorial justice demands no further adjust-
ments. People’s existing attachments carry enough weight to override non-urgent
third-party claims (which, of course, include claims to reestablish territorial
sovereignty).
Interestingly, this conclusion may stand even when a current holder of territorial
rights is responsible for the third party’s loss of its own territory (e.g. through
contributing to sea-level rise). Miller’s view, as we shall see, implies that upsetting
the current territorial attachments shared by members of a wrongdoing collective
has costs which may (and often do) exceed what they can be reasonably required
Angell
97
to bear. If so, wrongful territorial deprivations no longer require reparation. To use
a widespread term, we may say that the wrong has been ‘superseded’.7
Let us assume, for a moment, that the nationalist attachment theory is correct in
all this. That is seemingly bad news for people from sinking island states – at least if
they wish for more than rights of entry and occupancy. My present aim is to
brighten their prospects. I intend to show that the refugees have a right to rees-
tablish full territorial sovereignty, as reparation from those responsible for the
harmful effects of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.8 Importantly,
I will do so without having to deny any of the nationalist attachment theory’s core
theoretical premises. What I shall challenge is the long-term stability of the dis-
tributive conclusion that the nationalist draws from them. I therefore assume that
the islanders’ reparative claim to new territory, when first presented, is overridden
by the (allegedly) unreasonably large costs of upsetting territorial attachments.
However, that claim cannot be fended off over time. My thesis is that there
exists a collective (reparative) duty to modify one’s way of life. The idea is that,
when a sinking island state presses its claim for new territory, a collective respon-
sible for GHG emissions must reduce the current geographical reach of the terri-
torial attachment shared by its members, such that it requires less territory for its
future satisfaction. If we allow this process to happen gradually, the duty will not
impose unreasonable costs on its holders. Future redistribution of territory to the
islanders is thus justified, or so I shall argue.9
Although the nationalist attachment theory has become prominent in the debate
on territorial rights, it is not alone in having a view on the justified claims of climate
refugees from sinking island states. In recent years, philosophers and political
theorists have offered various defenses of various types of rights for such claimants
(cf. Dietrich and Wu¨ndisch, 2015; Kolers, 2012b; Nine, 2010, 2012; Risse, 2009).
The present analysis justifies a right to reestablish territorial sovereignty for the
refugees. That sets it apart from some of the other contributions, but not all.10
Instead, the novelty of my analysis is that it establishes such extensive rights while
operating, for argument’s sake, fully within the nationalist attachment approach –
an approach whose features have thus far been believed to produce much more
‘restrictive’ upshots. By showing that proponents of the nationalist attachment
approach are instead (surprisingly) committed to offering the most extensive set
of rights to refugees from sinking island states, my analysis aims to shake up a
significant part of the ongoing philosophical debate on what we owe such
claimants.11
The article unfolds as follows. The first section elaborates on the relevant core
features of the nationalist attachment theories, as I shall understand them for
present purposes. In the second and third sections, I explicate how a duty of modi-
fication is derivable from those core features. A crucial task is to explain (in the
third section) why the costs involved in modifying one’s way of life do not exceed
what the members of a wrongdoing collective are reasonably required to bear.
After having established the existence of a duty of modification, the fourth section
elaborates on why...
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