Fay­ola K J Fras­er

Who owns the Earth? We all do, but si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, no one does. In April 2023, Trinidad-born at­tor­ney Justin So­bion, along with Dutch aca­d­e­m­ic, Hans van Wil­lenswaard, launched their book, “Re­flec­tions on Earth’s Trustee­ship”. So­bion’s area of spe­cial­ty, en­vi­ron­men­tal law, is fea­tured in the book, which puts for­ward the con­cept of “earth trustee­ship” as a mod­el of plan­e­tary gov­er­nance to­wards re­duc­ing the im­pact of cli­mate change.

At present, So­bion is the co­or­di­na­tor of the Earth Trustee­ship Work­ing Group–a glob­al think tank, which con­sists of aca­d­e­mics across the world. Ac­cord­ing to him, “this con­cept of earth trustee­ship is like putting valu­able be­long­ings in a trust, and pre­serv­ing it for when chil­dren come of age.” This con­cept may seem par­tic­u­lar­ly nov­el in cli­mate change dis­course, but it is an an­cient prac­tice of the in­dige­nous peo­ple, where­by the eth­i­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for guardian­ship of nat­ur­al re­sources for the fu­ture gen­er­a­tion is in­ter­twined in­to their re­li­gious and spir­i­tu­al prac­tices.

The book con­sists of a col­lec­tion of schol­ar­ly in­puts that delve more deeply in­to the core tenets of earth trustee­ship. In his chap­ter, Klaus Bossel­mann, pro­fes­sor, New Zealand Cen­tre for En­vi­ron­men­tal Law, Uni­ver­si­ty of Auck­land states that “our hu­man des­tiny de­pends on the recog­ni­tion that we are all part of the ‘com­mu­ni­ty of life’ or ‘Earth com­mu­ni­ty.’” Ne­shan Gu­nasek­era, co-chair, Earth Trustee­ship Work­ing Group (ETWG), out­lines how the con­cept works, say­ing that “every gen­er­a­tion, far from be­ing in a po­si­tion of own­er­ship or over­lord­ship of the Earth, is in a po­si­tion of trustee­ship for gen­er­a­tions yet to come.” These aca­d­e­m­ic po­si­tions, put sim­ply by So­bion, trans­late to the fact that “we are not here on this earth for­ev­er, the earth is a gift that has been grant­ed to us, and it is our du­ty to pass it on in the same con­di­tion (or bet­ter) as it was when we re­ceived it.” If earth trustee­ship is em­bed­ded in­to in­ter­na­tion­al law, the be­lief is that states will now have a le­gal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to re­duce our eco­log­i­cal foot­print.

In Oc­to­ber 2022, the Pa­cif­ic is­land na­tion of Van­u­atu brought a draft res­o­lu­tion, co-spon­sored by a group of more than 130 coun­tries (of which T&T is part), be­fore the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly to re­quest an ad­vi­so­ry opin­ion from the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (the world’s high­est ju­di­cial body) to weigh in on ex­ist­ing laws, such as the covenants on cul­tur­al rights and the UN Con­ven­tion on the Law of the Sea, and to clar­i­fy the rights and oblig­a­tions of states in re­spect of cli­mate change. In so do­ing, the ICJ will give an ad­vi­so­ry opin­ion on the rights of present and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions to be

pro­tect­ed from cli­mate change. No­tably, Cari­com was the first re­gion­al group­ing to sup­port this ini­tia­tive. The suc­cess­ful adop­tion of this land­mark res­o­lu­tion by con­sen­sus was hailed as a vic­to­ry for cli­mate jus­tice, bear­ing in mind re­ports by the In­ter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change that hu­mans are re­spon­si­ble for vir­tu­al­ly all glob­al heat­ing over the last 200 years.

Fail­ure to pro­tect cit­i­zens from cli­mate haz­ards by putting po­ten­tial­ly puni­tive mea­sures to big in­dus­tries in­to place, can lead to coun­tries be­ing sued for cli­mate in­ac­tion. So­bion has hailed this mat­ter as a re­al and land­mark op­por­tu­ni­ty for T&T, and the Caribbean, to pro­vide more than “lip ser­vice” and get ac­tive­ly in­volved in sup­port­ing the prepa­ra­tion of ar­gu­ments for the case. “If se­nior coun­sels from Trinidad ap­peared be­fore the ICJ, Trinidad will be mak­ing a con­tri­bu­tion to this po­ten­tial­ly his­toric ICJ pro­nounce­ment.”

So­bion, how­ev­er, does not dis­count counter ar­gu­ments against earth trustee­ship. He un­der­stands how the con­cept can be seen as utopi­an, and “peo­ple may see it as al­tru­is­tic to take ac­tion for the ben­e­fit of an ab­stract col­lec­tive that isn’t born yet.” He al­so un­der­stands that some coun­tries are fac­ing cur­rent wars, or mas­sive threats to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, and may not take the en­vi­ron­ment as an im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ty when lives are at stake.

How­ev­er, he is in­sis­tent that we will be harsh­ly judged by fu­ture gen­er­a­tions if we don’t take this se­ri­ous­ly now.

Reflections on Earth Trusteeship

“By 2040, we won’t even have fish in the sea be­cause of over­fish­ing, and fish will be seen as di­nosaurs by fu­ture gen­er­a­tions,” he as­serts, “by 2050, our chil­dren and their chil­dren will be won­der­ing how we left the earth in this ter­ri­ble state.” So­bion al­so is firm in the be­lief that the new, younger gen­er­a­tion is where a great deal of hope lies. As Van­u­atu’s lob­by of the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly was ini­tial­ly birthed by a group of young cli­mate ad­vo­cates, he has great faith in the next gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers of coun­tries and in­dus­tries, who are mo­ti­vat­ed by and very in tune with the need for pri­or­i­ti­za­tion of the earth.

“Re­flec­tions on Earth Trustee­ship” is the first of its kind, and comes at a piv­otal time in his­to­ry, while the ICJ is prepar­ing to pro­duce an opin­ion on coun­tries’ oblig­a­tions to ad­dress cli­mate change. The book has mul­ti­ple au­thors, Right Liveli­hood Lau­re­ates, aca­d­e­mics, schol­ars, in­di­vid­u­als, youth, and mem­bers of civ­il so­ci­ety, all prof­fer­ing ex­per­tise on eco­log­i­cal gov­er­nance, and is co-edit­ed by So­bion and van Wil­lenswaard. So­bion is do­ing crit­i­cal work in­ter­na­tion­al­ly to sup­port the ac­tion against the cli­mate cri­sis and is send­ing a clear mes­sage to Caribbean coun­tries to sup­port this work. His book seeks to an­swer di­rect­ly “what oblig­a­tions do we have to peo­ple who are not born yet,” and out­line the vi­tal im­por­tance of tak­ing ur­gent ac­tion against the degra­da­tion of the earth. It was launched in April 2023 in Bangkok, Thai­land, and is set to launch on June 4 in the Hague, The Nether­lands.

If you are in­ter­est­ed in “Re­flec­tions on Earth Trustee­ship”, you can go to https://school­for­well­be­ing.org/.

Fay­ola K J Fras­er is a pro­fes­sion­al in the in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment are­na. She has a BA in In­ter­na­tion­al (Mid­dle East­ern) Stud­ies and an MSc in In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions & Diplo­ma­cy from the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics.