Climate Change: A Crisis for State Sovereignty
Robert Flawith examines the impact of global climate change on international order.
While scientists are still trying to predict the full impact of greenhouse gas emissions on the earth’s climate, few now doubt the impending, manmade rise in global temperatures. Indeed, it is becoming apparent that the effects of climate change on global temperatures for the next century are already ‘locked in’. Despite attempts to ameliorate the long-term trends of global warming, climate change is set to play an increasingly central role in international politics. This coming crisis represents a crossroads for the contemporary international political order, which is premised on the concept of state sovereignty. If the predicted climate change calamities come to pass, the custom of dividing the globe into independent, non-interfering, and territorially-based political units will be strained to breaking point. How states react to this crisis will determine the shape of international relations long into the future.
State sovereignty is a historically unique bundle of ideas that developed as a compact between the emerging nation-states of early-modern Europe. The practice of mutually recognised sovereignty had gradually come to be seen as a prerequisite for admission into the arena of international politics, creating a world in which territorial states maintained a monopoly over the legitimate use of violence. This pact was (in)famously expounded and enshrined in the treaties of Westphalia and Utrecht, in 1648 and 1713 respectively, which were originally designed to remove the ability of supra-national non-state actors, specifically the Catholic Church, from interfering in the internal affairs of states.
Whilst the concept of state sovereignty is complex and constantly shifting, the broad features of this paradigm are generally agreed to consist of two interrelated components: internal and external sovereignty. Internal sovereignty refers to a state’s right to exercise authority over a population, within a specifically defined territory, without interference from any other power. External sovereignty refers to extending the recognition of this right to other states, essentially a deal that acknowledges the right of other sovereign states to exist, as legal (if not military or economic) equals. Hedley Bull, in his work The Anarchical Society, recognised that the institution of sovereignty, which began in Europe and was extended globally to become the lynchpin of our modern international order, was a social construction promoted by states for the purposes of limiting inter-state violence.
Sovereignty as an ideology has fundamentally changed the rules of the game in international relations and is now consciously enforced by states that see adherence to the concept as entailing benefits they cannot afford to lose. Post-Westphalia, international anarchy no longer entailed a “nasty, brutish and short” Hobbesian free-for-all. Rather, it established a degree of order in which the globe is divided amongst nation-states on the basis of territory. States sit secure because of the guarantee that their ‘life’, ‘property’ and right to untrammelled independence within their own borders are enshrined in the compact of sovereignty.
“Climate change is set to play an increasingly central role in international politics.”
Westphalian sovereignty has all but eliminated the ‘death’ of nation-states and disputes over territory are increasingly becoming non-militarised due, in part, to international respect for the ‘property rights’ of other states. As a result, even chronically weak states, like Somalia, need not fear the annexation of their lands. Isolated attempts to upset the status quo are met by concerted and overwhelming force, as seen in the coalition effort to restore Kuwait’s independence in the first Gulf War. David Strang, in his article Anomaly and Commonplace in European Expansion, statistically demonstrates the impact that the concept of state sovereignty has had on international relations. He outlines that since 1415, states recognised as ‘sovereign’ have a much higher survival rate; and Tanisha Fazal, in State Death, notes the almost complete absence of violent state destruction since World War Two.
Global climate change, however, is set to become a catastrophic and destabilising influence on this international order, as its medium-term effects will not only directly undermine the principles of state sovereignty, but also counter some of its ‘benefits’. The unavoidably rapid rise in global temperature presents a new reality to which human society at all levels, including international politics, will have to adapt. Understanding the effects of this unprecedented climatic shift is essential to attempting to manage them effectively.
The Lowy Institute’s 2006 paper, Heating up the Planet, co-written by security expert Alan Dupont and climatologist Graeme Pearman, is one of the few attempts to deal with the effects of climate change in the next 50 to 100 years, in terms of the serious challenges to regional and global security it presents. It lists the most serious ‘locked in’ effects of climate change within the next century as weather fluctuations, which transform the global productive landscape by affecting areas suitable for farming; water and energy scarcities; increasingly severe natural disasters; and the collective burden that these factors will place on human populations. Pandemics, caused by resource scarcity and natural disasters, will also become more prevalent. Other effects include large-scale refugee flows and rising sea levels which threaten the survival of low-lying coastal areas, particularly the island nations of the South Pacific.
All told, climate change challenges the myth that what happens within one sovereign state has no corresponding effect on other sovereign states. Pollution from factories in America affects glacial melts in Greenland. Typhoons off the Chinese coast or malarial outbreaks in Indonesia are caused by the extensive use of coal-fired power stations in India and Australia. These interrelated events directly attack the concept of internal sovereignty. Countries large and small will realise that the calamities they face are caused by states on the other side of the world. The claim of sovereign independence of states within their own borders could become indefensible.
“How states prepare for and react to the coming storm will determine the kind of political world we inhabit.”
Alarm bells will perhaps ring loudest for states when the reality of territorial losses as a result of rising sea levels becomes apparent. Modern states derive legitimacy from their claim to ‘possess’ territory. As such, territory is one of the most prized assets states can cling to. From their perspective, the stability of possession of land is one of the most attractive features of sovereignty. Climate change leads to rising sea levels that will directly assault this certainty. Not only do many powerful states stand to lose some of their most influential cities and productive areas, but for practically the first time since World War Two, states will ‘die’. That is, several low-lying nations in the South Pacific will cease to have any territory at all.
How these unprecedented challenges to the concept of state sovereignty are met by states in their interactions with each other will determine the shape of international relations for decades to come. The realisation that all nations, through the environment, are connected to one another and are mutually interdependent could herald a new era of transnational cooperation. States may realise the best way to combat the natural disasters, pandemics and migrations caused by climate change is to assist other nations in disaster relief operations and in building ‘greener’ infrastructure. Territorial losses and the continued existence of states without territory might also lead to a de-emphasis on territory as a legitimating factor in international relations, paving the way for non-state actors such as IGOs and NGOs to play a greater role.
On the other hand, the stress of climate change on state sovereignty could push international relations into an even more conflicting and brutal phase. When resources, including territory, become scarcer, competition over what remains may become fiercer. This could compromise the order of ‘property rights’ enshrined in sovereignty. Klaus Toepfer, former head of the United Nations Environment Programme, has predicted future wars fought over water. Some states, faced by destabilising waves of displaced climate-refugees and pandemics, may find it tempting to retreat into a puritanical interpretation of sovereignty, ‘hardening’ their borders, closing themselves off, and shunning transnational cooperation by violently asserting their independence.
While perhaps not the most utopian way to organise international politics, Hedley Bull was at pains to point out that we need to treasure and defend even the modicum of order which the contemporary concept of sovereignty gives international relations, as there is no guarantee that what replaces it will not be even more chaotic, brutal and unjust. For this reason he was constantly apprehensive of factors that threatened to comprise the institution of sovereignty. The stresses that climate change will place on the relatively thin fabric of international order will be significant, and the result this will have on the conduct of international relations is far from certain. How states prepare for and react to the coming storm will determine the kind of political world we inhabit: a cooperative world where nations recognise their mutual interdependence; a competitive world of nations preoccupied with egoistically asserting their security; or, worse still, the complete shattering of the order built up around sovereignty and a descent into a Hobbesean state of nature.
