All humankind shares the Earth Endowment, but legal institutions have never devised a rational way to conserve natural bounty for the collective advancement and security of humanity. Global ecological problems arise within an international context that presumes complete national autonomy within borders. This nation-state model may operate well for many social and economic concerns, but it fails to adequately order ecological rights. Boundary-based governance perpetuates a fictional and obsolete assumption that all of ecology can be carved up and divided among sovereigns. The approach runs anathema to Nature’s own laws, which thread a complex web of life from resources that remain inextricably connected and interdependent across borders. Nations depart from these natural laws at their individual and collective peril.

The boundary approach creates two obvious problems. First, some planetary resources – like oceans and the atmosphere – cannot be divided. These indivisible assets tempt a free-for-all and race-to-exploit behavior among nations. Dying oceans, overfished marine stocks, and the polluted atmosphere signify the colossal failure of nations to organize respective ecological obligations into one coherent global framework. As to bounded assets, the focus on territorial sovereignty fails to characterize any duties flowing to nations and citizens located outside domestic national borders. Accordingly, transborder harm proliferates. Emissions from coal-fired plants in China contaminate fish swimming in the Great Lakes of the United States. Greenhouse gas pollution from the United States contributes (through planetary heating) to rising sea levels that will drown island nations and parch much of Africa. Radioactive fallout from Japan’s 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant disaster persists in the United States and other countries. By making a sovereign jigsaw puzzle out of ecology, national boundaries allow perpetrators of trans-boundary harm to escape legal accountability. The problem has always been one of externalities: economic benefits accrue to the polluter and citizens of one nation, while significant costs of such pollution fall to citizens of other nations.