Periodic Reporting for period 2 - DynamiTE (Dynamic Territory: A Normative Framework for Territory in the Post-Holocene)
Reporting period: 2022-07-01 to 2023-12-31
Climate change will disrupt current political, societal and economic paradigms. What should a just territorial arrangement be for countries that will partially or totally disappear due to sea level rise, or whose main productive activities—like farming—will be lost due to changed weather patterns? How to think of “locals” and “migrants” in a world where climate refugees are estimated to reach up to one billion by 2050? How should global systemic resources like rainforests or Antarctica be governed to guarantee their maintenance?
In a post-Holocene world where sea level rise, desertification, droughts, crop failure, water shortage, floods and extreme weather events will become the norm, we need normative criteria to solve conflicts of interest regarding the use of land and natural resources. DynamiTE aims to provide those criteria, developing a novel framework for territory on a global scale, reassessing the traditional rights and duties associated with it.
While current normative theories of territory (NTTs) rely on Late Holocene assumptions (stable and predictable climate, geography and demographics), DynamiTE theorizes territory amidst instability and unpredictability. While current NTTs draw their main normative assumptions from the Western liberal canon—e.g. that property rights over land and natural resources secure justice—DynamiTE questions their adequacy now and in the future, and looks at alternative worldviews that might provide useful concepts to rethink our relationship with the nonhuman natural world.
Examining three transversal themes (people in flux, distribution of land and resource use, and governance of global systemic resources), DynamiTE aims to be the first truly interdisciplinary NTT and to open a new field of research on normative questions surrounding territory in a changing world.
In a post-Holocene world where sea level rise, desertification, droughts, crop failure, water shortage, floods and extreme weather events will become the norm, we need normative criteria to solve conflicts of interest regarding the use of land and natural resources. DynamiTE aims to provide those criteria, developing a novel framework for territory on a global scale, reassessing the traditional rights and duties associated with it.
While current normative theories of territory (NTTs) rely on Late Holocene assumptions (stable and predictable climate, geography and demographics), DynamiTE theorizes territory amidst instability and unpredictability. While current NTTs draw their main normative assumptions from the Western liberal canon—e.g. that property rights over land and natural resources secure justice—DynamiTE questions their adequacy now and in the future, and looks at alternative worldviews that might provide useful concepts to rethink our relationship with the nonhuman natural world.
Examining three transversal themes (people in flux, distribution of land and resource use, and governance of global systemic resources), DynamiTE aims to be the first truly interdisciplinary NTT and to open a new field of research on normative questions surrounding territory in a changing world.
So far, we have completed WP1, a critical analysis of the current normative literature on territory and what it misses. We have taken the case of Antarctica (in which the PPI has previous expertise) to help rethink issues like the methodological nationalism and anthropocentrism characteristic of current theories of territory, the constitution of the political community for global systemic resources, and effective environmental protection under shifting climatic, geographic, and demographic conditions.
Regarding WP2 (focused mainly on the governance of ecosystems), we have been researching whether giving legal rights to nature would help in the transition towards more dynamic understandings of territory. We have critically scrutinized ‘relational values’ as a way of justifying the normative relevance of some environmental areas through the relations people have to it. We have also investigated whether resilience offers a property by which to delimit ecological systems in a non-arbitrary manner, in a way that would help towards a better governance of territory. We have begun researching ‘regions’ as providing a normatively relevant ecological foundation. We have worked on the idea of moving from sovereignty to guardianship in ecoregions: this would require a major shift in the standard understanding and exercise of sovereignty by states. The focus on guardianship also aligns with many non-Western worldviews, where the nonhuman natural world has always been in relation, rather than subject to, humans. We are also developing the idea of a protection paradox, which means that to protect a place (especially Global systemic resources) efficiently, one needs to carry out actions beyond that place.
Regarding WP3 (focused currently on how to attain just territorial transitions), we are investigating the relationship between sustainability, nature conservation, and social justice. The connection between sustainability and social justice is particularly interesting against the background of rethinking land-use concerns addressed in political thought through the lens of sustainability that allows from a more dynamic approach in conditions of environmental change.
As for WP4 (focused mainly on the movement of people due to climate change), we are investigating what the status of internally displaced people should reveal about the function and purpose of individual states and of the state system. Our thesis is that the legitimacy of individual states and of the system of states should be measured by how efficiently they coordinate for the protection of basic human rights. To do this, we start from international law both to critique it and to draw inspiration for a normative framework for dynamic territory.
Summing up, we are investigating and assembling the elements of a novel, more dynamic framework for territory: guardianship for ecoregions; rights of nature, which despite their contentious philosophical status may still be pragmatically advisable; sustainability understood as a requirement of social justice; and the constitution of a much more tightly coordinated system of states, to confront challenges like increased migration and the protection of ecoregions.
Regarding WP2 (focused mainly on the governance of ecosystems), we have been researching whether giving legal rights to nature would help in the transition towards more dynamic understandings of territory. We have critically scrutinized ‘relational values’ as a way of justifying the normative relevance of some environmental areas through the relations people have to it. We have also investigated whether resilience offers a property by which to delimit ecological systems in a non-arbitrary manner, in a way that would help towards a better governance of territory. We have begun researching ‘regions’ as providing a normatively relevant ecological foundation. We have worked on the idea of moving from sovereignty to guardianship in ecoregions: this would require a major shift in the standard understanding and exercise of sovereignty by states. The focus on guardianship also aligns with many non-Western worldviews, where the nonhuman natural world has always been in relation, rather than subject to, humans. We are also developing the idea of a protection paradox, which means that to protect a place (especially Global systemic resources) efficiently, one needs to carry out actions beyond that place.
Regarding WP3 (focused currently on how to attain just territorial transitions), we are investigating the relationship between sustainability, nature conservation, and social justice. The connection between sustainability and social justice is particularly interesting against the background of rethinking land-use concerns addressed in political thought through the lens of sustainability that allows from a more dynamic approach in conditions of environmental change.
As for WP4 (focused mainly on the movement of people due to climate change), we are investigating what the status of internally displaced people should reveal about the function and purpose of individual states and of the state system. Our thesis is that the legitimacy of individual states and of the system of states should be measured by how efficiently they coordinate for the protection of basic human rights. To do this, we start from international law both to critique it and to draw inspiration for a normative framework for dynamic territory.
Summing up, we are investigating and assembling the elements of a novel, more dynamic framework for territory: guardianship for ecoregions; rights of nature, which despite their contentious philosophical status may still be pragmatically advisable; sustainability understood as a requirement of social justice; and the constitution of a much more tightly coordinated system of states, to confront challenges like increased migration and the protection of ecoregions.
The project has been progressing according to plan and is expected to make a contribution to normative theories of territorial rights and rights over natural resources, by incorporating a strong environmental ethics/politics component that has been largely neglected so far.
While current normative theories of territory tend to assume methodological anthropocentrism (whereby humans are the only or main territorial actor) and methodological nationalism (which takes states as the almost exclusive political agents at the global level), DynamiTE goes beyond them but questioning these assumptions. First, insofar as it questions methodological anthropocentrism, it gives space for nonhuman actors as territorial actors, for example, nonhumans and maybe also ecosystems, through a Rights of Nature framework. Second, insofar as it questions methodological nationalism, it investigates other political units that might be equally relevant for territorial governance (like regions), and proposes a new standard of legitimacy for individual states and the states’ system, based on how well they coordinate and collaborate towards the fulfilment of basic human rights and the rights of the nonhuman natural world.
The project has also gone beyond the state of the art by pointing to a challenge that environmental protection poses for territorial governance; namely, that to effectively protect a territory one needs to act beyond the territory. How this may be done is still work-in-progress, but one potential answer is to stop thinking of environmental protection as tied to individual territorial jurisdictions, and start thinking of it as a domain where different, sometimes overlapping territorial units must coordinate to achieve goals deemed worthy for all of them.
By the end of the project, we aim to have a list of principles to reframe territorial governance. Among the elements that we foresee as being part of it are Rights of Nature; Sustainability conceived both as a social and environmental goal; guardianship over global systemic resources by a coordinated system of states (where the protection of the resource as such, and not whatever falls under individual jurisdictions, becomes central to the legitimacy of the system); and protection of basic human rights by a coordinated system of states (where the protection of individuals, and not just citizens, becomes central to the legitimacy of the system).
While current normative theories of territory tend to assume methodological anthropocentrism (whereby humans are the only or main territorial actor) and methodological nationalism (which takes states as the almost exclusive political agents at the global level), DynamiTE goes beyond them but questioning these assumptions. First, insofar as it questions methodological anthropocentrism, it gives space for nonhuman actors as territorial actors, for example, nonhumans and maybe also ecosystems, through a Rights of Nature framework. Second, insofar as it questions methodological nationalism, it investigates other political units that might be equally relevant for territorial governance (like regions), and proposes a new standard of legitimacy for individual states and the states’ system, based on how well they coordinate and collaborate towards the fulfilment of basic human rights and the rights of the nonhuman natural world.
The project has also gone beyond the state of the art by pointing to a challenge that environmental protection poses for territorial governance; namely, that to effectively protect a territory one needs to act beyond the territory. How this may be done is still work-in-progress, but one potential answer is to stop thinking of environmental protection as tied to individual territorial jurisdictions, and start thinking of it as a domain where different, sometimes overlapping territorial units must coordinate to achieve goals deemed worthy for all of them.
By the end of the project, we aim to have a list of principles to reframe territorial governance. Among the elements that we foresee as being part of it are Rights of Nature; Sustainability conceived both as a social and environmental goal; guardianship over global systemic resources by a coordinated system of states (where the protection of the resource as such, and not whatever falls under individual jurisdictions, becomes central to the legitimacy of the system); and protection of basic human rights by a coordinated system of states (where the protection of individuals, and not just citizens, becomes central to the legitimacy of the system).