Self-Determination, Jus Cogens, and the Climate/Security Nexus

The intensifying interaction between climate change and armed conflict tests the limits of how international law is ordinarily brought to bear. The customary obligation to prevent transboundary harm, the collective security architecture of the United Nations Charter, and the international climate change regime are each typically analysed in terms of obligations owed between States, and have not yet been fully trained on the position of peoples whose very existence as political communities is imperilled by the combined force of environmental breakdown and war. This impulse argues that the right to self-determination – already established in international law as a peremptory norm generating obligations erga omnes – belongs at the centre of that analysis.