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All the reasons that support the project of humanitarian intervention apply with equal, if not greater force, in the case of the environment
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. Continue reading...