ABSTRACT
The topic of this chapter is territorial sovereignty as the dominant legal-political regime of domination over nature and natural space in modern age – its origin, justification and structure and the injustice it brings about with regard to the human use of nature. The chapter traces the origin of sovereign territoriality as a technology of the appropriation of natural resources in the colonial period and outlines the history of its universalization while emphasizing its arbitrary character and the forms of injustice it brings about with respect to the use of natural resources. In the last section, the chapter shows how, despite an attempt to correct this institutionalized system of unjust appropriation of natural resources by the universalization of sovereign equality and constitutionalization of sovereignty by international law (e.g., by legalization of human rights), the new system of the “permanent sovereignty over natural resources” perpetuates all the problematic features and injustices of this regime.
