Governing Without Territory: A Framework for Deterritorialized Statehood and Climate-Induced Displacement in Small Island Developing States
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1285/i20356609v19n3p748-768Keywords:
climate change, deterritorialized sovereignty, self-determination, Small Island Developing States, statelessnessAbstract
Small Island Developing States (SIDS) face climate impacts projected to depopulate islands and render them uninhabitable, raising questions about how statehood and legal identity can persist when populations relocate and land disappears. This paper interrogates limits of existing legal categories and proposes a governance model that enables SIDS to maintain core sovereign functions and protect their people’s rights, positioning mobility as planned adaptation. The framework centres on regional governance hubs through which governments operate transnationally with host states, regional organisations, and international actors preserving the legal status of statehood within the current international order. Drawing on doctrinal and critical approaches to international law, the paper argues that any institutional solution within that order is limited by its foundational assumptions about territory, sovereignty, and self-determination, and by the distributive injustices these produce. Lasting solutions therefore require not only institutional creativity but a reimagining of sovereignty decoupled from territory and redistributed equitably in a system centred on human and environmental needs. This broader critique underpins the governance proposal rather than standing apart from it: the hub model acts as a bridge between existing institutions and deterritorialised statehood. Meaningful progress will require conceptual innovation and sustained multilateral cooperation.
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