Do the
Brazil Amazon fires justify environmental interventionism?
Lawrence
Douglas
All the
reasons that support the project of humanitarian intervention apply with equal,
if not greater force, in the case of the environment
Sat 31 Aug
2019 11.00 BST Last modified on Sat 31 Aug 2019 15.57 BST
‘It is time
for the international community to build on Macron’s lead and to recognize a
right to environmental intervention patterned on the notion of humanitarian
intervention.’ Photograph: Mayke Toscano/AFP/Getty Images
The
horrific destruction of the Amazon rainforest under Brazil’s far-right
president, Jair Bolsonaro, raises a pressing question for the world community:
do the prerogatives of sovereignty entitle a nation to destroy resources within
its territorial control, when this destruction has global environmental
consequences? The answer delivered by France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, at
the G7 summit is an emphatic no. It is time for the international community to
build on Macron’s lead and to recognize a right to environmental intervention
patterned on the notion of humanitarian intervention.
For
centuries, the international community treated sovereignty as an absolute
shield against intervention in a state’s domestic affairs. International law
insisted that a nation’s treatment of its own citizens and legal subjects was
not a matter of international legal concern. The ideology of sovereignty
authorized a nation to treat – and mistreat – its people as it saw fit.
Nuremberg
shattered this understanding. At Nuremberg, the allies recognized that a
sovereign’s systematic destruction of its own people was a matter of
international concern and constituted an international crime.
The
Nuremberg understanding gave birth to the idea that the world community need
not stand by idly when a nation commits atrocities against its own inhabitants.
Many human rights activists today speak not simply of a right to intervene but
of an affirmative obligation to do so. Activists understand that massive human
rights abuses – crimes against humanity and genocide – never remain entirely
local, even when committed exclusively within a state’s borders. These
atrocities inevitably create refugee problems that spill over into other
nations, creating larger international crises.
All the
reasons that support the project of humanitarian intervention apply with equal,
if not greater force, in the case of the environment. Massive environmental
crimes, such as those presently unfolding in the Amazon, necessarily have a
spill-over effect, as the degradation of the rainforest will do grave, and
arguably irreversible, damage to our planet’s climate.
The degradation of the rainforest will do
grave, and arguably irreversible, damage to our planet’s climate
Admittedly,
the concept of humanitarian intervention is not uncontroversial, especially as
it is understood to authorize the threat or actual use of military force to put
an end to massive human rights abuses. The doctrine can be manipulated to
justify military intervention for less than humanitarian grounds.
But the
2001 report on the Responsibility to Protect, prepared by the International
Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, offers a sound template for a
workable practice of environmental intervention. The idea is that when a state
fails to protect its own inhabitants, either by omission or commission, the
international national community must take responsibility – not, in the first
instance, by deploying military force, but through strong non-military means,
such as trade sanctions and economic boycotts. All this can and should be
applied to circumstances in which a nation fails to protect an environment the
defense of which is a matter of global concern.
Macron
deserves credit for highlighting at the G7 summit Brazil’s environmental
crimes. The $20m in emergency funds pledged by the G7 to fight the thousands of
fires presently burning will hardly solve the problem. Far more promising was
Macron’s threat to scuttle a trade deal with South American countries unless
Bolsonaro acts in decisive fashion to stop the burning. In delivering this
threat, Macron recognized that the responsibility to protect the environment is
a matter of global concern and not a prerogative of a reprobate sovereign.
Lawrence
Douglas is the James J Grosfeld Professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social
Thought, at Amherst College, Massachusetts. He is presently writing a book on
the legal and constitutional consequences of a possible refusal by President
Trump to acknowledge defeat in the next election, to be published by Hachette
in 2020. He is also a contributing opinion writer for the Guardian US
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