Dynamic Territory: A Normative Framework for Territory in the Post-Holocene

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 (GSRs), like rainforests, 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. DynamiTE conceptualizes territory and territorial agency as dynamic, with shifting boundaries and shifting memberships that reflect this new complexity. It proposes moreover a dynamic, interdisciplinary methodology that integrates environmental studies, geography and international law into political philosophy. Examining three transversal themes (people in flux, distribution of land and resource use, and governance of GSRs), 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.