DEREK R. BELL

ENVIRONMENTAL REFUGEES: WHAT RIGHTS? WHICH DUTIES?


ABSTRACT. It is estimated that there could be 200 million ‘environmental refugees’ by the middle of this century. One major environmental cause of population displacement is likely to be global climate change. As the situation is likely to become more pressing, it is vital to consider now the rights of environmental refugees and the duties of the rest of the world. However, this is not an issue that has been addressed in mainstream theories of global justice. This paper considers the potential of two leading liberal theories of international justice to address the particular issues raised by the plight of potential and actual environmental refugees. I argue that neither John Rawls’s ‘Law of Peoples’ approach nor Charles Beitz’s ‘cosmopolitanism’ is capable of providing an adequate account of justice in this context. Beitz’s theory does have some advantages over Rawls’s approach but it fails to take proper account of the attachment that some people have to their own ‘home’. KEY WORDS: Beitz, climate change, environmental justice, environmental refugees, international justice, Rawls

The leaders of Tuvalu – a tiny island country in the Pacific Ocean midway between Hawaii and Australia – have conceded defeat in their battle with the rising sea, announcing that they will abandon their homeland.1

The plight of the Tuvaluans is only the most dramatic example of the displacement of persons caused by environmental disruptions. The rise in sea levels caused by global warming has caused lowland flooding, saltwater intrusion, coastal erosion and more destructive storms in Tuvalu.2 It has become ‘an endangered nation’.3 However, sea level rise is only one environmental cause of population displacement. Desertification,
I would like to thank the Leverhulme Trust for financial support for the project of which this paper is a part. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the ‘International Justice in a Globalised World’ workshop, ISSEI Conference, Aberystwyth, July 2002. I would like to thank the participants at the workshop for their very helpful comments. I would also like to thank Simon Caney, Avner de-Shalit, Tim Gray, Peter Jones and an anonymous reviewer for very helpful written comments. 1 L.R. Brown, Environmental Refugees (2002) at http://www.foes.org.au/ci/ci_ecoref. htm. 2 Ibid. 3 Gayoom, cited in ibid.

Res Publica 10: 135–152, 2004. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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deforestation, extreme storms, earthquakes, floods and a general decrease in the productivity of land caused by poor management or climate change can all cause people to move in search of the means of survival. Environmental disruptions can come in many different forms. They may be ‘natural’ or ‘man-made’, ranging from cyclones to development projects such as dams. They may be short-term or long-term, ranging from short destructive storms or floods to the gradual encroachment of desert conditions into previously productive territory. The result may be the same whatever the cause: people forced by environmental circumstances to move from the danger ‘at home’ to look for a safer place where they can meet their basic needs. In 1995, Norman Myers claimed that ‘there are at least 25 million environmental refugees today, a total to be compared with 22 million refugees of the traditional kind . . . . The total may well double by the year 2010 if not before, as increasing numbers of impoverished people press ever harder on over-loaded environments.’4 Myers warned that the numbers could increase to 200 million people when rises in sea level caused by global warming take effect by the middle of the twenty-first century.5 For Myers, the choice for developed countries is simple: ‘export the wherewithall for sustainable development for communities at risk – or import growing numbers of environmental refugees’.6 However, there is a third option: namely, adopt a ‘lifeboat ethic’, which treats environmental refugees as a security problem for the developed world. Current policies – high levels of consumption, resource use and waste production; low levels of humanitarian aid; environmental degradation promoted by multinational companies; and ever-tighter immigration and asylum policies – suggest that the developed world has chosen the third option. In this paper, I propose to consider how we should respond to the plight of potential and actual environmental refugees. More specifically, I will critically examine the implications of two leading (liberal) theories of international justice for our policy on environmental refugees. Examining these theories in the specific context of this issue not only offers the prospect of developing insights into the rights of environmental refugees in a just world order, but also provides an important test for the two theories. Environmental problems – especially the kind of severe problems that cause population displacement – are likely to become increasingly important during the twenty-first century. Therefore a plausible theory of 4 N. Myers, Environmental Exodus: An Emergent Crisis in the Global Arena (Wash-

ington, DC: Climate Institute, 1995), 1. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid., 13.

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international or global justice should have the capacity to address them. So far, leading theories of international justice have not been systematically tested in this area and there has been little discussion of international environmental justice. This paper is divided into four sections. In section 1, I introduce the idea of ‘environmental refugees’ and identify a particular case, victims of global climate change, for discussion. In section 2, I consider the implications of John Rawls’s Law of Peoples for the situation of potential and actual environmental refugees. Rawls conceives of a just world order as a ‘society of peoples’: I argue that his approach is unable to deal with the situation of environmental refugees because it takes neither natural resources nor global interdependence sufficiently seriously. In section 3, I consider the implications of Charles Beitz’s ‘cosmopolitan’ theory of justice for the situation of environmental refugees: I argue that Beitz’s approach is much better able to respond to the plight of potential and actual environmental refugees. However, I suggest that it pays insufficient attention to the role of the physical environment in many people’s lives. In section 4, I offer a brief conclusion.

E NVIRONMENTAL R EFUGEES AND C LIMATE C HANGE The standard definition of ‘environmental refugees’ comes from ElHinnawi’s United Nations Environment Programme report, Environmental Refugees: Environmental refugees are defined as those people who have been forced to leave their traditional habitat, temporarily or permanently, because of a marked environmental disruption (natural and/or triggered by people) that jeopardized their existence and/or seriously affected the quality of their life. By ‘environmental disruption’ in this definition is meant any physical, chemical and/or biological changes in the ecosystem (or the resource base) that render it, temporarily or permanently, unsuitable to support human life.7

The idea of ‘environmental refugees’ has been criticised as ‘unhelpful and unsound intellectually, and unnecessary in practical terms’.8 The critics’ main complaints are that: (1) the label ‘environmental’ oversimplifies the causes of forced migration; (2) there is no evidence of very large numbers 7 E. El-Hinnawi, Environmental Refugees (Nairobi: United Nations Environment

Programme, 1985), 4. El-Hinnawi’s definition does not distinguish between people displaced beyond the borders of their own state and those displaced within state borders (unlike many definitions of ‘refugees’, including the Geneva Convention). For the purposes of this paper, I concentrate on those displaced beyond the borders of their own state. 8 R. Black, Environmental Refugees: Myth or Reality? (2001), available at http:// www.unhcr.ch/refworld/pubs/pubon.htm.

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of people being displaced by environmental disruptions (particularly desertification and rising sea levels); (3) it is a strategic mistake to use the label ‘environmental refugees’ because it may ‘encourage receiving states to treat [refugees] in the same way as “economic migrants” to reduce their responsibility to protect and assist’.9 In my opinion, none of these criticisms provides sufficient reason for not using the concept as it is used in this paper. First, the label ‘environmental’ identifies a particular ‘mechanism’ of displacement and broadens the category of ‘refugees’. It does not exclude closer investigation of the causes of population-displacing environmental disruptions. Second, the evidence is contested.10 Moreover, if the number of people being displaced by environmental disruptions may increase in the future, now is the time to consider our responsibilities to potential environmental refugees. Third, the idea that using the term ‘environmental refugees’ somehow makes it more likely that all refugees will be regarded as ‘economic migrants’ is unconvincing. More importantly, it reflects scepticism about the severity of the situation of people displaced by environmental disruptions that needs to be disputed rather than accepted. The critics of the notion of ‘environmental refugees’ may be too concerned to adhere to the Geneva Convention conception of refugees (which requires that refugees be victims of ‘persecution’) rather than more recent formulations, such as the Organization of African Unity’s (OAU) Convention on Refugees.11 An account of justice toward ‘environmental refugees’ should address two basic questions. What are our responsibilities to actual environmental refugees (i.e., people who have been displaced by an environmental disruption)? What are our responsibilities to potential environmental refugees (i.e., people who might be displaced by an environmental disruption)? Environmental disruptions can have many causes; therefore, there are many reasons why people become environmental refugees. I propose to 9 On (1) see J.A. McGregor, ‘Refugees and the Environment’ in eds R. Black and V.

Robinson, Geography and Refugees: Patterns and Processes of Change (London: Belhaven Press, 1993), 159–70, pp. 159–60. On (2) see Black, op. cit., 5–9 and R. Black, Refugees, Environment and Development (New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 1998), 26–31. On (3) see McGregor, op. cit., 162. 10 See, for example, Myers, op. cit. 11 For the Geneva Convention definition see UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees at http://www.unhcr.ch/html/menu3/b/o_c_ref.htm (1951). For the OAU Convention see OAU (1969) cited in El-Hinnawi, op. cit., 3. For critical discussion of the Geneva Convention definition see, for example, ed. B.S. Chimni, International Refugee Law: A Reader (London: Sage, 2000), 1–61; J.C. Hathaway, The Law of Refugee Status (Toronto: Butterworths, 1991) and eds F. Nicholson and P. Twomey, Refugee Rights and Realities: Evolving International Concepts and Regimes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

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focus on one cause of environmental disruptions, namely, global climate change. The chosen case is not intended to be representative of all causes of environmental disruptions. However, climate change may already be creating environmental refugees and there is wide agreement that it is likely to become the most significant cause of environmental disruptions and consequent population displacement within the next fifty years (or fewer).12 If a theory of international justice cannot adequately address the case of climate change, it cannot adequately address the problem of environmental refugees. The prevailing scientific wisdom is that climate change is the result of greenhouse gas emissions.13 Historically, developed countries have been almost entirely responsible for those emissions and past and present generations have benefited economically from the technology that produced them. However, it is not the developed countries that are likely to suffer the worst consequences of climate change. Instead, the costs will be borne by those living on marginal land likely to suffer desertification, islands and low-lying areas likely to suffer flooding and, more generally, any poor areas lacking the economic capacity and infrastructure to cope with any increase in extreme weather events. Of course, developed countries may suffer some adverse effects – but they are the best placed to respond to climate change and its consequences. The role of developed nations in creating environmental burdens for less developed nations might suggest an historic injustice that needs to be rectified. On this approach, duties to environmental refugees would be duties of corrective or rectificatory justice. However, the rights of potential and actual environmental refugees – and the duties of others to them – need not depend on an argument from historic injustice. If climate change (whatever its cause) has an impact on the distribution of benefits and burdens among persons or societies, potential and actual environmental refugees may have a claim on those who are better placed to deal with its (actual or potential) effects.14 Here I shall consider the potential of two 12 For discussion of the displacement effects of climate change see, for example, J.

McCarthy, Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 14, 43–4; Myers, op. cit., 1; and B. Muller, The Great Divide (Oxford: Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, 2002), 3–4. 13 See, for example, J. Griffin, ‘Introduction: The Many Dimensions of the Climate Change Issue’ in ed. J. Griffin, Global Climate Change: The Science, Economics and Politics (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2003), 1–24, pp. 4–7. 14 Typically, talk of ‘climate change’ refers to change ‘attributed directly or indirectly to human activity’ – see J. Miguez, ‘Equity, Responsibility and Climate Change’ in eds L. Pinguelli-Rosa and M. Munasinghe, Ethics, Equity and International Negotiations on Climate Change (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2002), 7–35, p. 7). The important issue for

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liberal theories of justice to address the situation of potential and actual environmental refugees without relying on an argument from historic injustice.15

T HE S OCIETY OF P EOPLES A PPROACH The first theory of international justice that I want to consider is the ‘society of peoples’ approach set out by John Rawls in The Law of Peoples. Rawls does not explicitly address environmental issues in The Law of Peoples. Indeed, it has been suggested that this is one important lacuna in his theory.16 The aim of this section is to consider how Rawls’s theory of international justice might nevertheless be worked out to address population-displacing environmental disruptions caused by climate change.17 Rawls’s normative theory of international relations is fundamentally a conception of a just foreign policy for a liberal society. His aim is to the discussion that follows is not which (or even whether) humans have caused climate change but rather how humans can respond to it. However, any argument for mitigation (as opposed to adaptation) obviously depends on the assumption that human activity can have an effect (and almost certainly has had an effect) on the global climate. I argue for mitigation – and assume that greenhouse gases are a major cause of climate change – in section 3 below. 15 There are good intuitive reasons for thinking that an argument from historic injustice might be a stronger argument – if developed nations have benefited from actions that have produced environmental burdens for others, ‘we’ might expect to have duties of corrective justice to those harmed by ‘our’ actions. However, arguments from historic injustice necessarily depend on a prior conception of justice. Moreover, there are difficult issues about collective (including intergenerational) responsibility as well as problems about identifying who is responsible for the “accumulative harms” – i.e., harms that result from the cumulative effect of many actions that would not be harmful on their own – associated with climate change – see J. Feinberg, Harm to Others: The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law Vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 225. I do not want to suggest that these problems are insurmountable but merely that the historic injustice argument – despite its intuitive appeal – is not straightforward. 16 See S. Caney, ‘Survey Article: Cosmopolitanism and the Law of Peoples’, The Journal of Political Philosophy 10 (2002), 95–123, p. 119. 17 There have been some discussions of the implications of Rawls’s domestic theory of justice for environmental issues. See, for example, B. Singer, ‘An Extension of Rawls’ Theory of Justice to Environmental Ethics’, Environmental Ethics 10 (1988), 217–31; P. Wenz, Environmental Justice (Albany: SUNY Press, 1988); D. Thero, ‘Rawls and Environmental Ethics: A Critical Examination of the Literature’, Environmental Ethics 17 (1995), 93–106; A. Dobson, Justice and the Environment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) and D. R. Bell, ‘Environmental Justice and Rawls’s Difference Principle’, Environmental Ethics (forthcoming). However, none of these accounts have considered the distinctive features of his theory of international justice.

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develop ‘within political liberalism . . . an extension of a liberal conception of justice for a domestic regime . . . [to] work out the ideals and principles of the foreign policy of a reasonably just liberal people’.18 For Rawls, the principle of reciprocity is central to political liberalism.19 In an international setting, reciprocity requires that a liberal society should only adopt a foreign policy that respects (or is founded on) principles of international justice that can be accepted by all ‘reasonable (or ‘decent’) and rational’ societies (or ‘peoples’), ‘as free and equal peoples’.20 The fundamental theoretical issue is how to define the ‘reasonable and rational’. Rawls makes it clear that ‘the criteria for [reasonableness and rationality] . . . are not deduced, but enumerated and characterized’.21 In the international context, a ‘rational’ people pursues their ‘fundamental interests’, namely, their self-respect or status as an independent and equal member of the ‘Society of Peoples’ and the conditions for the continued realisation of their own conception of domestic justice.22 A ‘reasonable’ people not only insists ‘on receiving from other peoples a proper respect and recognition of their equality’ but is also ‘fully prepared to grant the very same proper respect and recognition to other peoples as equals’.23 In so doing, a ‘reasonable’ people accepts constraints on their ‘rational’ pursuit of their fundamental interests.24 Rawls claims that ‘reasonable and rational’ peoples would agree to eight principles of international justice as a basis for foreign policy.25 This is not the place to consider the general plausibility of the content of these principles or their derivation.26 Instead, we need consider only those 18 J. Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999),

9–10; original emphasis. 19 Ibid., 14, 35. See also J. Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 16–7; and J. Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 6. 20 Rawls, The Law of Peoples, op. cit., 34; original emphasis. In the remainder of this paper, I use ‘reasonable’ to cover ‘reasonable or decent’. In the context of this paper, the distinction between ‘reasonable liberal peoples’ and ‘decent peoples’ is not important. For the idea of ‘decent peoples’ see ibid., 4, 64–7. 21 Ibid., 87. 22 Ibid., 34. See also ibid., 47–8, 71. 23 Ibid., 35. 24 See ibid., 29. 25 Ibid., 37. 26 For excellent critical discussions see C. Beitz, ‘Rawls’s Law of Peoples’, Ethics 110 (2000), 669–96; Caney, op. cit.; A. Kuper, ‘Rawlsian Global Justice: Beyond The Law of Peoples to a Cosmopolitan Law of Persons’, Political Theory 28 (2000), 640–74; and T. Pogge, ‘Critical Study: Rawls on International Justice’, The Philosophical Quarterly 51 (2001), 246–53.

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features of Rawls’s theory that shed light on how he might view the plight of potential and actual environmental refugees. A striking feature of Rawls’s account is the emphasis that he places on borders or ‘boundaries’.27 A people have their own territory and their own social and political institutions.28 They are responsible ‘for their territory and its environmental integrity, as well as for the size of their population’.29 For Rawls, the arbitrariness of a society’s boundaries ‘from a historical point of view’ is irrelevant for three reasons.30 First, the idea of a world state is untenable: therefore ‘there must be boundaries of some kind’.31 Second, a society’s wealth does not depend on its natural resources but rather on ‘its members’ political and civic virtues’, including their ‘industriousness and cooperative talents’.32 There is ‘no society anywhere in the world – except for marginal cases [such as “Arctic Eskimos”] – with resources so scarce’ that with good government it could not achieve the level of wealth necessary to maintain just institutions.33 The ‘arbitrariness of the distribution of natural resources’ associated with arbitrary borders ‘causes no difficulty’ because any inequalities of wealth among peoples are the result of their own choices.34 Third, ‘unless a definite agent is given responsibility for maintaining an asset and bears the loss for not doing so, that asset tends to deteriorate’.35 Someone must be deemed responsible for the earth’s natural resources and the most plausible division of responsibility (given Rawls’s two earlier points) makes peoples responsible for their ‘territory and its capacity to support them in perpetuity’.36 Rawls’s commitment to (slightly limited)37 national sovereignty over a territory and its natural resources has important implications for how we should respond to the kinds of environmental problem that can cause population displacement. Consider the case of global climate change. Rawls’s conception of international justice seems particularly ill-suited to this kind of situation for two reasons. First, the global climate and the composition of the upper atmosphere that determines it are not part of the ‘territory’ of any nation. They are part of the ‘global commons’, yet 27 Rawls, The Law of Peoples, op. cit., 38. 28 See ibid., 23–4, 38. 29 Ibid., 38–9. See also ibid., 8. 30 Ibid., 38. 31 Ibid., 39; original emphasis. See also ibid., 36. 32 Ibid., 117 and 108. 33 Ibid., 108. The reference to Arctic Eskimos is from ibid., 108, n. 34. 34 Ibid., 117. See also ibid., 39. 35 Ibid., 39. 36 Ibid., original emphasis. See also ibid., 8. 37 The limits are set by the eight principles of the law of peoples.

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they have a profound effect on the environmental integrity of all nations. Rawls’s theory simply ignores the existence of the ‘global commons’ and the location of all national territories within it. Moreover, Rawls’s defence of national sovereignty over natural resources is premised, as we have seen, on the claim that ‘unless a definite agent is given responsibility for maintaining an asset and bears the loss for not doing so, that asset tends to deteriorate’. If he is correct, the ‘tragedy of the global commons’ seems inevitable in his society of peoples because no one can have responsibility for the global commons. In short, Rawls ignores a problem that is insoluble in his world order. However, Rawls’s theory might not be as ill-equipped to deal with this kind of problem as it initially appears. The eighth principle of the law of peoples recognises a duty to assist ‘burdened societies’: Peoples have a duty to assist other peoples living under unfavorable conditions that prevent their having a just or decent political and social regime.38

Rawls defines a burdened society as one that lacks ‘the human capital and know-how, and, often, the material and technological resources’ needed to secure and maintain the conditions necessary for just institutions.39 The aim of the duty of assistance is to enable burdened societies to achieve just institutions and thereby become members of the society of (just) peoples. For Rawls, the duty of assistance involves more than ‘merely dispensing funds’.40 It is the political and social culture of a people that determines ‘how a country fares’: ‘assistance’ therefore must also include an international ‘emphasis on human rights’ aimed at changing ‘ineffective regimes’.41 It is not clear whether Rawls’s account of burdened societies extends as far as societies threatened by (or suffering from) the potentially devastating effects of climate change. However, even if we were to include them among burdened societies, Rawls’s theory would still offer only limited support to environmentally burdened peoples. It does not require equality of wealth among members of the society of peoples. Instead, it may allow large inequalities of wealth among (just) peoples. Therefore the support that one society must offer to another society to deal with their environmental problems may be very limited. Moreover, Rawls’s duty of assistance is intended to help the citizens of burdened societies to make best use of their own territory. It does not require that developed nations 38 Ibid., 37. 39 Ibid., 106. 40 Ibid., 108. 41 Ibid., 117 and 109. Rawls cites Sen’s work on the role of human rights and women’s

rights in preventing famines (ibid., 109–10).

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accommodate displaced persons.42 Yet resettlement may be the only option for the inhabitants of lowland areas already destined to be flooded as a result of irreversible climate changes. It is hardly likely that Rawls would think that such people should not be resettled. The problem is to find a place in his theoretical framework to accommodate them. The only option seems to be the kind of ad hoc solution that Rawls suggests when he recognises that there may be ‘marginal cases’ where a society’s resources are ‘so scarce’ that it could not maintain just institutions.43 His example of such a society is ‘Arctic Eskimos’ and he suggests that they are ‘rare enough, and need not affect our general approach’.44 There may be limits to the kinds of cases that a theory of justice can accommodate so that there are times when we do have to rely on ad hoc solutions. However, the effects of global climate change are likely to be so far-reaching that the ‘marginal cases’ where significant proportions of a people’s territory are submerged under rising seas (or made uninhabitable or unproductive in other ways by global warming) cannot be said to be ‘rare enough’ not to ‘affect our general approach’. A plausible conception of international justice for the twenty-first century and beyond must have the capacity to address these issues without resorting to ad hoc solutions. One final possibility that a Rawlsian approach might pursue is the idea of international agreements designed to mitigate the effects of climate change. The second and third principles of the law of peoples allow for international agreements and require their observance: 2. Peoples are to observe treaties and undertakings 3. Peoples are equal and are parties to the agreements that bind them.45

However, there are two reasons to doubt that peoples in a Rawlsian international order would agree to a treaty that would offer genuine protection to potential or actual victims of climate change. First, we have already seen that a Rawlsian international political system is likely to face ‘tragedy of the commons’ problems. It may be collectively rational for everyone to sign an international agreement to mitigate the effects of climate change 42 Members of the society of peoples might agree to help each other in emergency conditions, such as natural disasters, including offering temporary accommodation for disaster victims. However, agreeing to permanently accommodate victims of global climate change would seem to be more demanding. More generally, accommodating people from burdened societies would be a ‘long-term’ commitment, given that such societies are so far from achieving and maintaining the just institutions necessary to support their people (ibid., 106). If a people must rely on its own territory in perpetuity, it must have ‘at least a qualified right to limit immigration’ (ibid., 39, n. 48). 43 Ibid., 108, n. 34 and 108. 44 Ibid., 108, n. 34. 45 Ibid., 37.

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but it is individually rational for each (or, at least, most) peoples to continue with a “business as usual” approach rather than paying the economic cost of reducing their greenhouse gas emissions.46 Moreover, the benefits and burdens of climate change and climate change mitigation, adaptation or compensation are not equally shared among peoples. Developed peoples must pay the economic costs of mitigation, adaptation or compensation while it is less developed peoples that suffer the most serious consequences of inaction (because of their climate and location and – more importantly – their lack of infrastructure and resources to adapt to climate change).47 The different incentive structures facing the parties to any potential agreement, combined with the economic inequalities between them, are likely to ensure that any international agreement does more to protect the rich than it does to protect potential environmental refugees. In short, the potential signatories of a climate change treaty are not equally situated because they are not economically or environmentally equal. Therefore any agreement they reach will reflect these differences.48 The eighth principle – if it applies to environmentally burdened peoples – might place some limits on the kind of treaty that could legitimately be negotiated by members of the society of peoples. Even so, on Rawls’s theory, it is only burdened societies that should be protected from ‘exploitation’, however; relatively poor members of the society of peoples must make their own way in the global marketplace and in international treaty negotiations. In summary, we have seen that Rawls’s conception of international justice may not be wholly silent on the environmental issues that we are 46 On the difficulty of designing a successful climate change treaty given the incentive structures of individual states, see Barrett’s discussion of the shortcomings of the Kyoto Protocol and some possible alternative approaches in S. Barrett, Environment and Statecraft (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 373–98. 47 A point of considerable contention in the Kyoto negotiations has been the possibility of imposing emissions limits on less developed (non-Annex I) countries (some of whom will become major polluters in the near future). However, it is widely agreed that even if the economic development of less developed nations should be managed to control their emissions, a substantial portion of the costs of ‘clean development’ should be met by developed nations. See, for example, T. Banuri and E. Spanger-Siegfried, ‘Equity and the Clean Development Mechanism: equity, additionality, supplementarity’ in eds L. Pinguelli-Rosa and M. Munasinghe, op. cit., 102–36, p. 103. 48 It might be suggested that Rawls could require ‘fair standards of treaty negotiation’ just as he suggests that peoples should agree to ‘fair standards of trade’ including ‘fair background conditions’: but both ideas are problematic in the context of Rawls’s theory (Rawls, The Law of Peoples, op. cit., 43 and 42, n. 52). The analogy with the domestic context would suggest that ‘fair background conditions’ would require radical redistribution of wealth among societies to produce something closer to Beitz’s ‘global difference principle’, which Rawls rejects (ibid., 116–9). If we think of treaty negotiation as analogous to trade, the same problem of ‘fair background conditions’ arises.

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considering. However, it does not provide a plausible starting-point for the construction of a theory of international environmental justice that can adequately address the plight of potential and actual environmental refugees.

T HE C OSMOPOLITAN A PPROACH The second theory of international justice that I want to consider is the ‘cosmopolitan’ approach set out by Charles Beitz in his Political Theory and International Relations49 Beitz starts from Rawls’s earlier short consideration of international justice in A Theory of Justice and through a critical discussion of Rawls’s theory develops a much more demanding conception of international justice.50 One of the features of Beitz’s account is that he pays more attention than Rawls to natural resource issues: therefore we might reasonably expect his theory to have more to say about environmental problems. The aim of this section is to consider how his conception of international justice can be worked out to address the problem of population displacement caused by climate change. Beitz rejects two key features of Rawls’s position. First, he disputes Rawls’s claim that a society’s wealth does not depend on its natural resources. Instead, he identifies ‘two elements that contribute to the material advancement of societies’, namely, ‘human cooperative activity’ and the ‘natural resources . . . distributed . . . over the earth’s surface’.51 For Beitz, the distribution of natural resources among peoples matters because it is (or, at least, may be)52 a significant factor in the determination of ‘how a country fares’.53 Therefore, the radical natural resource inequalities among nations that Rawls considers morally irrelevant are of the utmost importance for a theory of international justice. The natural distribution of resources among nations is arbitrary in a sense that is similar to Rawls’s claim that natural talents are ‘arbitrary’ in the context of a domestic theory of justice.54 More precisely, nations are not morally entitled to the resources in their territory or to the wealth created by the use of those resources. 49 Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999. 50 For Rawls’s earlier position, see J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1972), 378–9. 51 C. Beitz, op. cit., 137. 52 See his ‘Rawls’s Law of Peoples’, op. cit., 690 and Political Theory and International Relations, op. cit., 206. 53 Rawls, The Law of Peoples, op. cit., 117. 54 Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations, op. cit., 141.

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For Beitz, the ‘underlying principle’ for the distribution of natural resources is not that each people should keep its own resources but rather that each person has an equal prima facie claim to a share of the total available resources, but departures from this initial standard could be justified . . . if the resulting inequalities were to the greatest benefit of those least advantaged by the inequality.55

In essence, Beitz is proposing an international analogue of Rawls’s difference principle but applied only to natural resources rather than to income and wealth (which are products of both social cooperation and natural resources). He calls this principle the ‘resource redistribution principle’ (RRP).56 Second, Beitz argues that Rawls’s conception of nations as independent and self-sufficient entities is incorrect. He points out that International interdependence is reflected in the volume of transactions that flow across national boundaries – for example, communications, travel, trade, aid, and foreign investment.57

If nations are interdependent, there appears to be no reason to ‘view national boundaries as having fundamental significance’ or as determining the ‘scope’ of principles of justice.58 Instead, we should seek global principles of distributive justice that can be accepted by all ‘reasonable and rational’ persons.59 Beitz suggests that if Rawls is correct that ‘social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are . . . to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged’ in a domestic context, the same principle of distribution should be chosen by ‘reasonable and rational’ persons at the global level.60 This principle – a ‘global difference principle’ (GDP) – is more demanding than the resource redistribution principle because it applies to income and wealth (as products of both global social cooperation and natural resources) rather than just to natural resources.61 The differences between Beitz’s cosmopolitanism and Rawls’s ‘society of peoples’ approach are significant in the context of our discussion of environmental disruptions and population displacement. The RRP makes it impossible to ignore the effects of environmental degradation. If a nation (or a person) does not have its fair share of natural resources, the RRP requires redistribution from the resource-rich to the resource-poor. A 55 Ibid., 141. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid., 144. 58 Ibid., 151. 59 See ibid., 203. 60 Ibid., 151 quoting Rawls. 61 Ibid., 152.

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victim of environmental degradation for which she is not responsible will be entitled to resource transfers if she is left with less than her fair share of the total available natural resources (after the value of her lost resources has been subtracted from the global resource sum).62 Victims of natural environmental disasters, transboundary pollution and the effects of global climate change might all benefit from the RRP.63 The GDP also has interesting implications. For Beitz, respecting people as ‘free and equal moral persons’ involves reconstructing the ‘basic structure’ of international (or global) society – its many and varied political, economic and social institutions – to meet the global difference principle, thereby securing the greatest advantage of the globally least well off.64 In a just world, the victims of climate change would be protected by global institutions that guaranteed them a fair share of global wealth. In an unreconstructed and unjust world, the GDP implies that the less well off should not be held responsible for all of their decisions. On this account, it is not just absolutely poor (or burdened) societies that should not be held responsible for signing up to international treaties or trade agreements that do not protect them from (or even make them more vulnerable to) the effects of climate change. Citizens of relatively poor (or less well off) societies, relatively powerless smaller societies and relatively poor individuals in almost any society may all find that they lack the necessary economic means to underwrite their status as ‘free and equal moral persons’ in a globalised marketplace. In short, the GDP implies that global inequalities of wealth and power that are beyond those allowed by the global difference principle should not be allowed to influence the outcomes of treaty or trade negotiations. So far, I have suggested that Beitz’s cosmopolitan theory of international justice would offer substantial rights to potential and actual environmental refugees displaced by the effects of global climate change. The RRP would require the redistribution of natural resources so that their distribution is to the advantage of the least well off after the effects of any environmental disruption caused by climate change are taken into account. The GDP would require that the global basic structure should be designed to ensure that any inequalities in wealth are to the advantage of the least well off, thereby protecting anyone displaced by the effects of climate 62 At least, in principle – see Beitz, ‘Rawls’s Law of Peoples’, op. cit., 692 for some potential qualifications based on pragmatic or instrumental considerations. 63 Beitz explicitly mentions climate and location as ‘natural resources’ – see Political Theory and International Relations, op. cit., 206. 64 Ibid., 203. The idea of the ‘basic structure’ of society comes originally from Rawls: see his Political Liberalism, op. cit., 258.

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change from poverty and destitution. So protection from environmental disruptions caused by climate change seems to be an essential requirement of a just world order. The problem arises when we look more closely at the character of that protection, however. Consider the situation of small island nations. Beitz’s cosmopolitan theory of justice requires that if climate change leads to rises in sea level and the islands are lost, the islanders should receive natural resource transfers65 (by RRP) and may also be entitled to wealth transfers (and other primary goods) depending upon their particular situation in the context of a global basic structure designed to satisfy the difference principle (by GDP). In terms of justice, the islanders’ claims are fully satisfied by such transfers.66 Indeed, Beitz’s cosmopolitan theory of justice provides no obvious reason for countries that emit huge quantities of greenhouse gases to cut their emissions as long as they are prepared to make appropriate transfers (including land or citizenship rights) to the victims of climate change.67 The recognition that the outcome of their actions will be the destruction of a nation’s territory is irrelevant. But isn’t the refusal to cut greenhouse gas emissions to protect the integrity of the islanders’ territory an injustice? One way of defending this claim is to consider the analogy that Beitz draws between natural talents and natural resources.68 He recognises that Rawls’s contention that talents are arbitrary from a moral point of view might be challenged on two grounds. First, talents are naturally attached to persons. Second, talents are (or, at least, can be) constitutive of personal identity. He suggests that neither is true of natural resources. Natural resources are not naturally attached to particular persons – we acquire them. Similarly, natural resources are not constitutive of personal identity: It would be inappropriate to take the sort of pride in the diamond deposits in one’s back yard that one takes in the ability to play the Appassionata. This is because natural resources 65 We might reasonably assume that this would include entitlement to land. 66 I assume that the same would be true of the “victims” of development projects (e.g.,

the building of dams) who received their natural resource and wealth entitlements under RRP and GDP. 67 In fact, Beitz’s approach does not generate either a duty to mitigate the effects of climate change or a duty to fund adaptation to the effects of climate change. It requires only compensation. Of course, there may be a duty of intergenerational justice to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but such a duty would have to be owed by one global generation to subsequent global generations. It would not offer any protection for a people ‘to live where our ancestors have lived for thousands of years’ (Paani Laupepa quoted in Brown, op. cit.). Instead, it could offer future generations only a fair share of natural resources and wealth. 68 See Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations, op. cit., 137–40.

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come into the development of personality (when they come in at all) in a more casual way than do talents.69

Beitz’s example – diamond deposits – may make his position seem plausible. It is true that diamonds ‘are not there, as parts of the self, to begin with. They must first be appropriated’ before they can be ‘worked on, shaped, and benefited from’ in ‘the development of personality’.70 However, it is much less clear that the same is true of the islanders’ territory. The physical environment in which a person lives may well be (partly) constitutive of their identity.71 In the modern world, many of us may not have a place that we think of as ‘home’ or we may be able to make many places our ‘home’ for periods of our lives.72 However, the people most likely to be displaced by climate change may also be most likely to have a closer attachment to the land that is their ‘home’ and the community that shares that ‘home’.73 If we conceive of natural resources (and wealth) as substitutable, we may think that it is fair to make decisions that will leave the potential victims of climate change ‘homeless’; but if we recognise that social and natural environments are more than mere resources, we cannot so readily conceive of such decisions as just. Beitz’s cosmopolitan theory of justice succumbs to the liberal temptation to conceive of the environment as a resource; and yet liberal neutrality demands that the environment should not be conceptualised in any pre-determined way.74 In summary, I have suggested that Beitz’s cosmopolitan approach has significant advantages over Rawls’s society of peoples approach in the 69 Ibid., 139. 70 Ibid., 140 and 139. 71 This claim might be interpreted in different ways. I intend to claim that a person’s

identity may be formed in the context of and in response to their physical environment. The meaning of their life – and what Matthew Humphrey calls their ‘sense of ontological security in the face of the uncertainties of life in human society’ – may depend on the preservation of that context. See M. Humphrey, Preservation versus the People? Nature, Humanity, and Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 187. 72 On the idea of attachment to ‘home’ in the modern world see M. Dummett, On Immigration and Refugees (London: Routledge, 2001), 18–9. 73 On the idea of the ‘land as an inalienable home for those who inhabit it and not as an object to be bought and sold for economic gain’ see M. Smith, An Ethics of Place: Radical Ecology, Postmodernity and Social Theory (Albany: SUNY Press, 2001), 159. Islanders seem especially likely to have this kind of attachment to their ‘home’. 74 On this point, I disagree with those who blame liberalism – understood as a philosophical position – for reducing nature to mere resources. Liberals may be guilty but liberalism properly understood is not.

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context of our discussion of environmental refugees.75 First, it has the conceptual space to recognise environmental issues ignored or rendered insoluble within Rawls’s ideal theory. Second, it avoids marginalising the problems that it does recognise: it accepts the critical importance of natural resources and global institutions, thereby, providing grounds for taking seriously environmental degradation and its effects on the natural resources and wealth of individuals. However, Beitz’s theory does not offer a fully adequate account of the injustice of environmental disruptions caused by global climate change because it accepts an inadequate conception of the role of nature in human life.76

C ONCLUSION If either of the theories of international justice we have considered were to be realised in the world the number of persons displaced by environmental disruptions would be significantly decreased. However, only the cosmopolitan approach provides potential and actual environmental refugees with significant rights to natural resource and wealth transfers from those who are better off. Our comparison of the two leading theories of international justice suggests that an adequate treatment of the plight of environmental refugees is likely to be fundamentally cosmopolitan. The weakness in Beitz’s cosmopolitanism, however, is that it ignores the importance of place in people’s lives. The physical environment is not simply a natural resource to be ‘appropriated . . . worked on, shaped, 75 One other possible advantage that I have not discussed is that Beitz’s cosmopolitan

approach does not require a naïve view of international politics in which the only significant actors are peoples (or states). In principle, Beitz’s ‘moral cosmopolitanism’ is compatible with any number of different institutional arrangements (see C. Beitz, ‘International Liberalism and Distributive Justice: A Survey of Recent Thought’, World Politics 51 (1999), 269–96, pp. 286–7). The complexity of both climate change and the modern economic and social world suggests that a fully worked out theory of duties to potential and actual environmental refugees may need to pay very serious attention to the question of what kinds of entity should be duty-bearers. For example, should states remain the primary duty-bearers? What kind of role should supra-national institutions play in a just world order? Who should be responsible if the primary duty-bearers cannot meet the demands of justice? What might be the proper role of multinational corporations, non-governmental organisations and individuals? Beitz’s approach seems compatible with an exploration of these issues whereas Rawls’s approach requires an exclusive focus on peoples or states as the only duty-bearers in the international arena. 76 In fact, the problem is more general: Beitz’s theory is unable to recognise the injustice of any human-induced environmental disruption that causes displacement but offers a fair share of natural resources and wealth to the displaced.

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and benefited from’.77 It can also be a person’s home; a fundamental and constitutive part of their identity. For many people, their environment provides the frame of reference in which the development of their personality takes place. A theory of justice should not ignore the fact that each of us is “a particular person in a particular place”. Of course, it is also true that we have the ability to distance ourselves – physically and psychologically – from our home but that does not mean that it is morally legitimate for others to remove our option of staying at home. For many people, home is not just one place among others; it is not substitutable without significant psychological cost. A plausible cosmopolitan theory of justice must recognise that it is unjust to treat people as if they were merely citizens of an undifferentiated world. Therefore, it cannot treat the disruption, degradation or destruction of particular environments or homes as nothing more than the loss of some substitutable natural resources. Instead, the pursuit of development goals must be constrained by a concern for the protection of people’s homes. There may be limits to how much justice requires us to pay to protect people’s homes but we should always take into account the claims of those who may be displaced. At the very least, their substantive rights to have their homes protected should be supported by procedural rights to effective participation in (global and national) decisions that may significantly affect the conditions of their homes.78 Potential and actual environmental refugees should be entitled not only to equal rights to natural resources and wealth as “citizens of the world” but also as “particular persons in a particular place” they should be entitled to some control over what happens to their homes. School of Geography, Politics and Sociology University of Newcastle 40–42 Great North Road Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU UK E-mail: [email protected]

77 Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations, op. cit., 140. 78 On the important role of global democracy in dealing with climate change more

generally see B. Holden, Democracy and Global Warming (London: Continuum, 2002).