The Human Doctrine of Governing Global Commons is a Systemic Issue Behind COVID-19

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has brought environmental issues to the forefront unlike any of its predecessors. The consensus is that the environmental factors underlying the pandemic are not just the result of any recent human incursions into nature but they have been in making for decades and centuries. COVID-19 is one of the outcomes of tragedies of commons!

The basic problem has been the presumption that humans are stewards of nature while failing to recognize the inability in managing global commons!

Global commons such as land, water, and air have been enduring human pressure through most parts of the agricultural and industrial stages of human civilization. Off late, the result of human transgressions on nature has become visible in the form of water pollution, air pollution, land degradation, deforestation, droughts, floods, landslides, and climate change with associated health and poverty impacts.

The tragedy of commons occurs when natural resources are exploited in the absence of agreements, laws, and rights. It is the result of the basic human doctrine of being able to preserve the global commons while pushing the development agenda!

The realization that natural resources are finite has not led to any drastic changes in our approach to life and living on this planet. Our approach remains to safeguard human developmental goals while trying to renegotiate terms of engagement with nature.

In a series of failed attempts to renegotiate engagement with nature, we enacted policies, laws, and treaties at the national to international level. For the most part, these efforts have failed because we have been putting human development in the forefront at the cost of nature!

Despite putting human interests in the front, we still lost the game as evident from the societal inequalities perpetuated through the same policies and institutions we erected for renegotiating terms and conditions of engagement with nature! The institutions and policies failed to protect the environment and failed to share environmental benefits to people equitably and fairly. Even policies that have positive intent in the short-run have not been able to protect the environment in the end (E.g. policies promoting efficiency have suffered from rebound effects).

This is symptomatic of the basic doctrine of environmental protection and development employed since the beginning. There is a clear confusion within the environment and development fraternity that the principles of sovereignty and responsibility can coexist. We failed to realize that the principle of national sovereign rights over natural resources doesn’t sit well with the concept of preserving the global commons.

Take the example of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (1972) (UNCHE) that talked about environmental protection and sustainable development. It stated that humans have the ‘right’ to enjoy a ‘clean’ environment. To quote, “States have, by the Charter of the United Nations (which doesn’t state anything about environment or sustainable development) and the principles of international law, the sovereign right to exploit their resources under their environmental policies, and the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction.”

Here, the key sentence to be underscored is the sovereign right of nations to exploit their natural resources while not damaging the environment of other states or areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction (paraphrased). Clearly, this statement emerged out of a misunderstanding of how nature works, that nature follows the rules of human-created boundaries and laws. UNCHE declaration is not an exception. The World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) (or Brundtland Commission) has also shown such confusion between sovereignty and responsibility.

Several commissions and conventions have subsequently promoted the doctrine of consuming nature ‘sustainably’. We just negotiated how much of the atmospheric space each country can consume under UNFCCC! We invented a game of developing vs developed to show who has more right to consume nature while shying away from taking any responsible measures for the future.

Construed constructions of human superiority over nature have only given countries a right to consume natural resources, thanks to the sovereignty, and forget the responsibilities vested on them to protect nature! 

It is not surprising that our environmental and developmental doctrine has given birth to institutions that are designed to fail (Decoy Institutions, this term is not coined by me). Mekong river commission (MRC) provides a good institutional framework for the downstream countries to address environmental conflicts in the Mekong River basin. However, strong countries such as China, an important player in deciding the future of the river flows, has just an observer status, and downstream countries do not have the needed leverage to influence policies in the upstream. MRC is not a decoy institution, but clearly, there is an imbalance of power to make it far from being successful.

Lack of collective commitment has led to the creation of ‘Decoy Institutions’ serving the vested interests and or promoting inaction!

What is the way forward?

Revisit the national sovereignty over nature: There is a need to revisit the concept of national sovereignty over certain natural resources. This is the high-time for the international community to bring certain natural resources under the strict international oversight removing them from the purview of national sovereignty.

Ecuador, Columbia, New Zealand and Bangladesh have taken the 'rights of nature' path. It is time that other countries follow the suit.

Put fundamental duties over fundamental rights: There is a need to reconstruct our value systems so that the fundamental duty to protect nature supersedes the fundamental rights to services nature provides. The expansion of traditional national security in terms of external military and political threats into other forms of security such as energy, food, and water security has largely missed the angle of environmental security. The concept of security has often been construed as one’s right to resources and this understanding has undermined the logic of responsibility towards resource conservation, and that the right to resources does not supersede the duty to preserve.

‘Naturify’ the GDP: There is a need to decouple the wellbeing and development from the use of natural resources. Efforts such as circular economy, dematerialization, natural capital accounting, and total natural resources rents as % of GDP provide a good beginning to understand and address natural resource degradation but are not sufficient.

Real-time information on natural resource use: There is a need for real-time information on natural resource use at all levels of use. It is difficult to know for countries that their developmental actions have negative consequences on other states and societies until such consequences are measured and reported. It is even more difficult to know the natural resources used by corporations. By the time the impacts are known, it is often too late. There is a dearth of information on the environmental damage caused by development in real-time and vulnerabilities related to environmental degradation often pile up before they surface.

Principle of subsidiarity: The principle of subsidiarity states that the disputes related to natural resources should be dealt with at the lowest possible level i.e. community. Though considered controversial by some peers, this has largely been adopted in the European Union states with some success. The promotion of such a principle may help in addressing some of the issues generated by top-down decision making. However, corporations and larger entities can still undermine the capacity of communities!

Restoring land rights to indigenous communities: Indigenous people who are based on the land and environment are often divided by the national borders and they are devoid of the right to move within the environmental space they have been depended upon for centuries (Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim). There is a need to recognize their rights and allow them to move freely within the land they belong to. For centuries, such migrations of indigenous people within their environmental space are known to contribute to environmental protection.

The identities of people with their land should be preserved!

Local communities are the stewards of nature. When decisions are made in a top-down manner, and people are removed from the decision-making process, this leads to more conflicts (Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim). Governments are supposed to facilitate the dialogue between people and not to make decisions for them. However, that has not been the case. When corporations are added to this mix, it produces a perfect platform for conflicts.

Inspired by discussions at the DOC/Nomadeis webinar on 23/06.