Resource Sovereignty
Climate Change Beyond the Material
By Hassaan bin Sabir
On June 1, 2017, while addressing a crowd gathered in the White House’s Rose Garden, President Donald Trump announced his administration’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement. This was necessary, he declared, because the agreement put the United States at a relative economic disadvantage to other states.[i] Focusing particularly on developing nations like India and China, Trump argued the accord was unfair to allow these countries to continue extracting natural resources such as coal while preventing the U.S. from doing the same.[ii]
One year later, Jair Bolsonaro, another right-wing populist campaigning for his country’s presidency, vowed to withdraw Brazil from the Paris Agreement if elected. Though Bolsonaro later backtracked on his pledge, the now-President sought assurances from the international community that Brazil would not have to cede sovereignty to either indigenous tribes or international jurisdiction over the country’s resource-rich Triple A region, which includes the Amazon rainforest, Atlantic Ocean and the Andes mountains.[iii]
Though Trump and Bolsonaro’s rationales for criticizing the Paris Climate Agreement differed, their aversion to the accord points to deeper tensions at the heart of the contemporary climate debate. These tensions center around the difficulties associated with arriving at a universally agreed upon framework for apportioning responsibility among states, and stem from the availability of a variety of methods to measure a state’s share of responsibility. This is a particularly contentious issue in developing nations, where the interplay of phenomena such as colonialism and sovereignty deeply influences the lens through which these states view their natural resources.
Measuring responsibility
Statistics on annual carbon dioxide emissions provide support for President Trump’s critiques of the Paris Climate Agreement. In 2017, for instance, China accounted for more than a quarter of global CO2 emissions, in comparison to 16.2% for the United States. India came third in the list with a relatively paltry 6.8%.[iv] Judging by these numbers, President Trump is well within his rights to insist on both further limits on China and India’s ability to extract natural resources such as coal as well as a more equitable distribution of responsibility among the top emitters.
The issue, however, is that aggregating emissions by country is just one of several ways to assess a state’s share of responsibility with respect to curbing climate change. Another method is to analyze per capita emissions, which tells a different story. Using these, states such as China and India, with their comparatively vast populations, slip down the rankings; China doesn’t even fall within the top 20 per capita emitters. Instead, three of the top four spots are held by gulf states, with the U.S. ranked eighth.[v]
Similarly, cumulative CO2 emissions, which span an extended period, offer insight into the devastating impact of colonialism on the environment. The tendency for overconsumption that underpinned the colonial system continues to drive climate change; this is a legacy that colonizing societies must confront, as illustrated by the numbers on cumulative CO2 emissions since 1750, which show that seven of the top ten emitters during this period have been colonial powers.
Colonialism, Climate Change, and Sovereignty
These numbers also carry political implications, as they help explain President Bolsonaro’s emphasis on maintaining Brazil’s sovereignty over its natural resources. This is representative of a broader aversion within developing states towards international interference in their handling of natural resources.
The global economic system in the colonial era was predicated on the extraction of natural resources from former colonies. This served as the primary driver of industrialization efforts in the Western world, allowing these nations to accumulate wealth and influence at the expense of colonized states. Some experts, for instance, have calculated that the British drained approximately $45 trillion worth of raw materials and natural resources from India during colonial rule.[vi] While this catalyzed economic growth in Britain, India was left worse off. Prior to colonization, the Indian contribution to global GDP stood at 23%. This number had fallen to nearly 3% when the British left; per capita incomes also stagnated in India under British rule.[vii][viii]
More than anything else, however, colonialism prevented formerly colonized societies from utilizing their natural resources for their own development. The same can be said for tax revenues and foreign exchange reserves, which served primarily to strengthen colonizing economies.[ix] The United Nations addressed this murky past by enshrining the principle of sovereignty over natural resources.[x] This had its roots in both post-war conceptions of sovereignty and self-determination as well as growing calls within newly decolonized nations for complete control over their natural resources. In this way, this doctrine recognizes the right of states to utilize the natural resources in their territories in the interests of their national development and the well-being of their citizens.
Conclusion
President Bolsonaro and other leaders in developing nations are likely to point towards this history when expressing their discontent at international accords that seek to regulate the extraction of natural resources. For these states, natural resources serve as more than just a means for economic growth and development. Instead, they view the extraction of natural resources for the benefit of their citizens as the culmination of their struggles for independence and an assertion of their newfound sovereignty. Considering that the prosperity developed economies in the West enjoy today was predicated on the denial of the same to colonized societies, this is unsurprising. And the mere threat of climate change, the blame for which can be attributed to colonial powers, is unlikely to erode these deep-seated sentiments, which shape the collective psyches of both governments and citizens within nations such as Brazil.
[i] Roger Harrabin. “Paris Agreement: Trump Confirms US Will Leave Climate Accord.” BBC News. BBC, October 24, 2019. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50165596.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Rodrigo Viga Gaier. “Brazil's Bolsonaro Scraps Pledge to Quit Paris Climate Deal.” Reuters. Thomson Reuters, October 26, 2018. https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-brazil-election/brazils-bolsonaro-scraps-pledge-to-quit-paris-climate-deal-idUKKCN1MZ1CR.
[iv] “Each Country's Share of CO2 Emissions.” Union of Concerned Scientists. Accessed October 29, 2019. https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/each-countrys-share-co2-emissions.
[v] Sean Fleming. “Chart of the Day: These Countries Create Most of the World's CO2 Emissions.” World Economic Forum. Accessed October 29, 2019. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/06/chart-of-the-day-these-countries-create-most-of-the-world-s-co2-emissions/.
[vi] Jason Hickel. “How Britain Stole $45 Trillion from India.” Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera, December 19, 2018. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/britain-stole-45-trillion-india-181206124830851.html.
[vii] PD Smith. “Inglorious Empire by Shashi Tharoor Review – What the British Did to India.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, February 23, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/23/inglorious-empire-what-british-did-to-india-shashi-tharoor-review.
[viii] Jason Hickel. “How Britain Stole $45 Trillion from India.” Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera, December 19, 2018. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/britain-stole-45-trillion-india-181206124830851.html.
[ix] Ibid.
[x] Bungenberg, Marc, and Stephan Hobe. Permanent Sovereignty Over Natural Resources. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2015.
