The Global Commons and International Politics

How should we govern the commercialization of humanitys common heritage?

International Law has developed important institutions of global governance and distributive justice to put resources such as the deep sea bed and outer space beyond state ownership, preserving them as part of a common heritage for the benefit of all humanity and future generations. But as the technology of exploitation becomes viable, these areas are coming under threat from important states and Big Business. The political, moral, legal and environmental concerns arise and must be addressed - before it is too late.

Offering readers a clear introduction to this field, the authors bring the various legal regimes under a single conceptual framework and consider what justice requires in response to the dangers posed by the scramble to exploit our common heritage. They develop a distinctive account of the interstitial legal and moral reasoning that can and should shape arguments about global commons, global justice and international law, and demonstrate how normative arguments of distributive justice can be relevant to both international law and international politics. Arguing for the centrality of distributive issues to global justice, they extend the 'practical turn' in international political theory in new and exciting directions, showing how global commons ideas could be made central to many important traditions in political theory.