how additionally complicated the situation would be
if major powers such as the United States and China
were themselves heavily affected by climate change,
a possibility that cannot be ruled out. A 2010 World
Bank report concludes:
At all levels, from local to global, climate change and
scarcity issues will force decision-makers – and, ulti-
mately, individual citizens – to make choices between
intensifying zero-sum competition and increasing co-
operation in rules-based orders (Evans 2010).International consensus and cooperation will un-
questionably be necessary. There is no precedent for
loss of the entire territory of a state or the permanent
exile of all or most of its population (United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees 2009a). New rules
must be written for a problem whose scope will likely
be much greater than the loss of a few small island
states. Critically important is that the new arrange-
ment be sustainable, make ecomigration easier, and
meet the requirements of human security and national
security. Climate change adaptation will compel the
greatest reengineering project ever. As the locus of
Western civilization was once the Mediterranean Sea,
in little more than 100 years time it may be the Arctic
Ocean.
Conclusion and Recommendations
The effect of climate change on the international
state system will be pronounced, and in one particular
way—ecomigration—will directly challenge a bedrock
tenet of state sovereignty and national security: terri-
torial integrity. Changes to international law should
therefore be made, starting soon, to permit ecomigra-
tion to occur when and where it must. A system that