Cara Nine – författare

Historical injustice and global inequality are basic problems embedded in territorial rights. We ask questions such as: How can the descendants of colonists claim territory that isn''t really ''theirs''? Are the immense, exclusive oil claims of Canada or Saudi Arabia justified in the face of severe global poverty? Wouldn''t the world be more just if rights over natural resources were shared with the world''s poorest? These concerns are central to territorial rightstheory and at the same time they are relatively unexplored. In fact, while there is a sizable debate focused on particular territorial disputes, there is little sustained attention given to providing a general standard for territorial entitlement. This widespread omission is disastrous. If we don''tunderstand why territorial rights are justified in a general, principled form, then how do we know they can be justified in any particular solution to a dispute?As part of an effort to remedy this omission, in this book Cara Nine advances a general theory of territorial rights. Nine puts forward a theory of territorial rights that starts with the idea that territorial rights affect everybody. Territorial rights, she asserts, must be universally justified. She adapts a theoretical framework from natural law theory to ground all territorial claims. In this framework, particular territorial rights are claimable by the collectives that establishlegitimate, minimal conditions for justice within a geographical region. A consequence of this theoretical approach to territorial rights is that exclusive resource entitlements are justified, even if they maintain global inequality.

In Sharing Territories, Cara Nine defends a river model of territorial rights. On a river model, groups are assumed to be interdependent and overlapping. If we imagine human settlements and territorial rights as established in river catchment areas-not on lands with walls and borders-the primary features of group life are not independence and distinctness. Drawing on natural law philosophy, Nine's theory argues for the establishment of foundational territories around geographical areas like rivers. Usually lower-scale political entities, foundational territories overlap with and serve as the grounding blocks of larger territorial units. Examples of foundational territories include not only river catchment areas but also urban areas, drawn around individuals who hold obligations to collectively manage their surroundings. Foundational territorial authorities manage spatially integrated areas where agents are interconnected by dense and scaffolded physical circumstances. In these areas, individuals cannot fulfil their natural obligations to each other without the help of collective rules. As foundational territories overlap the territories of other political units, Nine frames a theory of nested and shared territorial rights, and argues for insightful changes to the allocation of resource rights between political groups and individuals.

In Sharing Territories, Cara Nine defends a river model of territorial rights. On a river model, groups are assumed to be interdependent and overlapping. If we imagine human settlements and territorial rights as established in river catchment areas-not on lands with walls and borders-the primary features of group life are not independence and distinctness. Drawing on natural law philosophy, Nine's theory argues for the establishment of foundational territories around geographical areas like rivers. Usually lower-scale political entities, foundational territories overlap with and serve as the grounding blocks of larger territorial units. Examples of foundational territories include not only river catchment areas but also urban areas, drawn around individuals who hold obligations to collectively manage their surroundings. Foundational territorial authorities manage spatially integrated areas where agents are interconnected by dense and scaffolded physical circumstances. In these areas, individuals cannot fulfil their natural obligations to each other without the help of collective rules. As foundational territories overlap the territories of other political units, Nine frames a theory of nested and shared territorial rights, and argues for insightful changes to the allocation of resource rights between political groups and individuals.