The paper argues for a more systematic and sustained engagement of international political theory with the global commons. It argues for the need to develop a normative theory of the global commons and outlines the main contours of such a theory. A special emphasis is put on global justice and its contribution to addressing critical issues and formulating normative ideals for the global commons in the age of climate and environmental crisis.
The first part of the paper critically analyzes the dominant international legal concept of the global commons that defines them as shared geographic domains located beyond the territorial jurisdictions of sovereign states. The main limitations of this conception are discussed, following from the fact that the global commons are defined as frontiers of the expanding system of political geography of sovereign states and constructed as areas where states pursue their interests and govern them in the name of their national interests, especially the control of maximum available natural resources. The paper points out that the international legal structure and governance regimes in the global commons lead to inequality, depletion of natural resources, and failures to adopt regimes of common property avoiding the tragedy of the commons. In the second part of the paper, I argue for the need to develop a normative theory of the global commons that overcomes these limits and enables more equitable, sustainable, and inclusive governance of the global commons. The paper overviews several important recent conceptions and approaches in political theory (e.g. new commons approaches or latest developments in climate and marine justice) and shows how they could be made to bear on a new theory of the global commons. The central focus is placed on global justice. The paper makes a case for a pluralistic theory of global justice that combines distributive, procedural, and ecological justice and integrates their principles into a new theory of the global commons.
