I-Law Supplement Extensions
Climate Change
Climate change challenges will demand the application of new innovations in
international law.
Badrinarayana, ’10 [Deepa, Assistant Professor of Law, Chapman University School of Law; SJD
and LL.M. in Environmental Law, Pace University School of Law; “GLOBAL WARMING: A SECOND
COMING FOR INTERNATIONAL LAW?” Washington Law Review, Volume 85, 2010;
http://threedegreeswarmer.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Deepa-Author-Copy1.pdf; p. 292]
It is therefore necessary to produce “new products at every stage”190 based on our understanding of history
and theories of legislation. International legal history reveals that traditional conceptions such as sovereignty will not protect states or
their citizens against rights violations without some mechanism of legal redress. Climate change may well bring about the
second coming of international law because it demands such innovative legal responses .
Existential threat of climate change is at least as great as nuclear war.
Egan, 9-1-17 [Timothy, New York Times Contributing Op-Ed Writer, covers the environment, the
American West and politics; “The Week the Earth Stood Still;” New York Times, September 1, 2017;
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/opinion/harvey-rain-record-climatechange.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_ty_20170901&nl=opiniontoday&nl_art=2&nlid=81118612&ref=headline&te=1]
If we won’t listen to science, maybe we’ll listen to science fiction. I keep thinking of a movie I saw as a kid, “The Day
the Earth Stood Still,” about a time when all the world’s trivial matters were briefly put aside to gasp in awe at a spaceship landing on Earth. “It’s
no concern of ours how you run your own planet,” says
the alien, Klaatu, “but if you threaten to extend your violence, this
Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder.” The reference in that 1951 film was to
nuclear annihilation . And today, the smartest military men count the global insecurity and chaos of
climate change as an existential threat on a par with nuclear disaster.
Biodiversity
International law has a key role in protecting international biodiversity.
Pritchard, ‘5 [David, has spent 25 years in various fields of nature conservation science, policy and
law. Currently Adviser on International Treaties with BirdLife International/RSPB, he plays a prominent
role in numerous global fora, and has a particularly long association with the Ramsar Convention on
Wetlands. He was the architect of some of the earliest moves to link conservation treaties with the world
of impact assessment; “International biodiversity-related treaties and impact assessment — how can they
help each other?” Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, 23:1, 7-16, DOI:
10.3152/147154605781765706; March 2005;
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3152/147154605781765706; p. 13]
The biodiversity-related
conventions potentially have a key role , not so much in pushing forward the frontiers of the best
evolving practice (although they can certainly make a contribution there), but in raising the minimum standard as high as
it can be agreed to go, throughout the whole geographical and political range of a given convention’s
influence. Inevitably the thinking involved has to be recast in each convention’s particular language and must evolve in such a way that those
concerned feel a sense of ‘ownership’ of it. Whether or not this is reinventing the wheel, it is probably a necessary part of the
process of broadening the constituency. One of the most important functions of the conventions is to
create essential mandates and imperatives for biodiversity conservation, and these often feed into IA processes.
From this can flow legislation and guidelines for ensuring that biodiversity issues are adequately
addressed in assessments, and authoritative processes for identifying priorities, for example among sites and
species. These all help to make more explicit, in advance, what is valued and why, and what its particular vulnerabilities might be.
Biodiversity is vital to human survival.
Raj 12 – [Consultant ecologist [Prof. P. J. Sanjeeva Raj (Head of the Zoology dept of Madras Christian College), “Beware the loss of
biodiversity,” The Hindu, Published: September 23, 2012 00:32 IST | pg. http://tinyurl.com/8oate79]
Biodiversity is so indispensable for human survival that the United Nations General Assembly has designated the decade
2011- 2020 as the ‘Biodiversity Decade’ with the chief objective of enabling humans to live peaceably or harmoniously with nature and its
biodiversity. We should be happy that during October 1-19, 2012, XI Conference of Parties (CoP-11), a global mega event on biodiversity, is
taking place in Hyderabad, when delegates from 193 party countries are expected to meet. They will review the Convention on Biological
Diversity (CBD), which was originally introduced at the Earth Summit or the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development
(UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) is the nodal agency for CoP-11. Today, India is one of the
provides all basic needs for our healthy survival —
oxygen, food, medicines, fibre, fuel, energy, fertilizers, fodder and waste-disposal, etc. Fast vanishing
honeybees, dragonflies, bats, frogs, house sparrows, filter (suspension)-feeder oysters and all keystone species are causing great
economic loss as well as posing an imminent threat to human peace and survival. The three-fold biodiversity
17 mega-diverse (richest biodiversity) countries. Biodiversity
mission before us is to inventorise the existing biodiversity, conserve it, and, above all, equitably share the sustainable benefits out of it. Unique
role Contrary to all such utilitarian objectives of biodiversity, the concept of ‘Deep Ecology’ believes in the intrinsic value of every living being,
wherein all life is to be respected for its own sake, not for any of its monetary values. There is no living being that is so abject and absolutely
useless for its ecosystem, even if we have not yet understood its utility. Every
living being discharges its own unique
ecosystem functions or services, and hence the loss of any single species destabilises the whole
ecosystem. Keystone species render more obvious or even altruistic services to their ecosystems. Hot spots The
tropics have the most luxurious biodiversity but, unfortunately, overpopulation by their poor eco-societies, which are compelled to live at the
expense of their own biodiversity, poses such great dilemmas and threats to conservationists that ‘hot spots’ had to be identified to save their
marginalised poor as well as their biodiversity simultaneously. The Assam Himalayas and the Western Ghats are two such little explored but
richest biodiversity treasure banks in India. However, some lacunae in our knowledge base of our biodiversity still exist such as the precise
ecosystem functions or services of each species, and also, the economic valuation of benefits from not only every species but also every type of
ecosystem and, above all, from the more difficult gene-pools, all of which need to be studied all over the world. The slogan of the Hyderabad
CBD CoP-11, inscribed on the logo, in Sanskrit, “Prakruthi: Rakshathi Rakshitha,” and the same in English, “Nature Protects if She is Protected,”
truly underscores that humans
should realise the symbiotic relation between themselves and nature, so
imperative for their mutual survival on planet Earth.
Pandemics
International law via international health regulations or IHR is vital to thwart
future global disease pandemics.
Wilson, Brownstein & Fidler, ’10 [Kumanan, Department of Medicine, Ottawa Health Research
Institute, University of Ottawa, Canada; John, Children’s Hospital Informatics Program, Children’s
Hospital, Boston, MA; David, Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA and
Maurer School of Law, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN; “Strengthening the International Health
Regulations: lessons from the H1N1 pandemic;” Health Policy and Planning 2010;25:505–509;
https://watermark.silverchair.com/czq026.pdf?token=AQECAHi208BE49Ooan9kkhW_Ercy7Dm3ZL_9
Cf3qfKAc485ysgAAAb4wggG6BgkqhkiG9w0BBwagggGrMIIBpwIBADCCAaAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAT
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TaxjbdSbzWTsWT6Hn4X8RU4U9dq3YCEcQ1IYE23ntPIT5xsz4S9tjwvhXLFUvSj17871rXYqCghpf1
Ax0eSIfe2DKlb4evPEev69PSfB7SSWRMjlRcjezaIXmtAKBV_qquEomnjntfELGGtaJbdxmuj7B9PEqGeL7b8hrpi4xbktVsJNvMJMDaRvE46-xBO9IlVqBC-lT2iMBZkOJKhaDrR1gHdndFzUsaxFKoKW4NUTrT1kGdEtx71HoLiN7VLZFMdk8n7bbp3c0xoA2MSHWf5jqHb
Tb30EzryB1nzSvogvIamTKEv0AIVDzaEFWEIvIf3FH5yhHwWv7XSiJg; p. 508]
The
2009-H1N1 outbreak highlighted the potential the revolutionary change in international law the
IHR(2005) represent, but it also revealed problems that require immediate attention. Stronger global health
security will require strategic advances in the implementation of, and compliance with, the IHR(2005).
Without such advances, the problems seen during the 2009-H1N1 outbreak may multiply exponentially if
the world community faces a more dangerous influenza virus or some other virulent microbial
surprise.
Disease pandemics threaten extinction.
Dhillon 17 [Ranu, works on building health systems in developing countries and served as an advisor to
the president of Guinea during the Ebola epidemic instructor at Harvard Medical School, Harvard
Business Review, 3-15-17, “The World Is Completely Unprepared for a Global Pandemic”,
https://hbr.org/2017/03/the-world-is-completely-unprepared-for-a-global-pandemic]
it is only a matter of time before we face a deadlier and more contagious pathogen, yet the threat
of a deadly pandemic remains dangerously overlooked. Pandemics now occur with greater frequency , due
to factors such as climate change , urbanization , and international travel . Other factors, such as a weak World Health Organization
and potentially massive cuts to funding for U.S. scientific research and foreign aid, including funding for the United Nations, stand to
deepen our vulnerability. We also face the specter of novel and mutated pathogens that could spread
and kill faster than diseases we have seen before . With the advent of genome-editing technologies, bioterrorists could artificially engineer new
plagues, a threat that Ashton Carter, the former U.S. secretary of defense, thinks could rival nuclear weapons in deadliness . The two of us have advised
We fear
the president of Guinea on stopping Ebola. In addition, we have worked on ways to contain the spread of Zika and have informally advised U.S. and international organizations on the matter. Our
experiences tell us that the world is unprepared for these threats. We urgently need to change this trajectory. We can start by learning four lessons from the gaps exposed by the Ebola and Zika
pandemics. Faster Vaccine Development The most effective way to stop pandemics is with vaccines. However, with Ebola there was no vaccine, and only now, years later, has one proven
effective. This has been the case with Zika, too. Though there has been rapid progress in developing and getting a vaccine to market, it is not fast enough, and Zika has already spread worldwide.
Many other diseases do not have vaccines, and developing them takes too long when a pandemic is already under way. We need faster pipelines, such as the one that the Coalition for Epidemic
Preparedness Innovations is trying to create, to preemptively develop vaccines for diseases predicted to cause outbreaks in the near future. Point-of-Care Diagnostics Even with such efforts,
vaccines will not be ready for many diseases and would not even be an option for novel or artificially engineered pathogens. With no vaccine for Ebola, our next best strategy was to identify who
was infected as quickly as possible and isolate them before they infected others. Because Ebola’s symptoms were identical to common illnesses like malaria, diagnosis required laboratory testing
that could not be easily scaled. As a result, many patients were only tested after several days of being contagious and infecting others. Some were never tested at all, and about 40% of patients in
Ebola treatment centers did not actually have Ebola. Many dangerous pathogens similarly require laboratory testing that is difficult to scale. Florida, for example, has not been able to expand
testing for Zika, so pregnant women wait weeks to know if their babies might be affected. What’s needed are point-of-care diagnostics that, like pregnancy tests, can be used by frontline
responders or patients themselves to detect infection right away, where they live. These tests already exist for many diseases, and the technology behind them is well-established. However, the
process for their validation is slow and messy. Point-of-care diagnostics for Ebola, for example, were available but never used because of such bottlenecks. Greater Global Coordination
We
need stronger global coordination . The responsibility for controlling pandemics is fragmented, spread across too many players with no unifying authority. In
Guinea we forged a response out of an amalgam of over 30 organizations, each of which had its own priorities. In Ebola’s aftermath, there have been calls for a mechanism for responding to
pandemics similar to the advance planning and training that NATO has in place for its numerous members to respond to military threats in a quick, coordinated fashion. This is the right thinking,
but we are far from seeing it happen. The errors that allowed Ebola to become a crisis replayed with Zika, and the WHO, which should anchor global action, continues to suffer from a lack of
credibility. Stronger Local Health Systems International actors are essential but cannot parachute into countries and navigate local dynamics quickly enough to contain outbreaks. In Guinea it
took months to establish the ground game needed to stop the pandemic, with Ebola continuing to spread in the meantime. We need to help developing countries establish health systems that can
provide routine care and, when needed, coordinate with international responders to contain new outbreaks. Local health systems could be established for about half of the $3.6 billion ultimately
spent on creating an Ebola response from scratch. Access to routine care is also essential for knowing when an outbreak is taking root and establishing trust. For months, Ebola spread before
anyone knew it was happening, and then lingered because communities who had never had basic health care doubted the intentions of foreigners flooding into their villages. The turning point in
the pandemic came when they began to trust what they were hearing about Ebola and understood what they needed to do to halt its spread: identify those exposed and safely bury the dead. With
Ebola and Zika, we lacked these four things — vaccines, diagnostics, global coordination, and local health systems — which are still urgently needed. However, prevailing political headwinds in
the United States, which has played a key role in combatting pandemics around the world, threaten to make things worse. The Trump administration is seeking drastic budget cuts in funding for
foreign aid and scientific research. The U.S. State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development may lose over one-third of their budgets, including half of the funding the U.S.
usually provides to the UN. The National Institutes of Health, which has been on the vanguard of vaccines and diagnostics research, may also face cuts. The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, which has been at the forefront of responding to outbreaks, remains without a director, and, if the Affordable Care Act is repealed, would lose $891 million, 12% of its overall budget,
provided to it for immunization programs, monitoring and responding to outbreaks, and other public health initiatives. Investing in our ability to prevent and contain pandemics through
revitalized national and international institutions should be our shared goal. However, if U.S. agencies become less able to respond to pandemics, leading institutions from other nations, such as
Institut Pasteur and the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in France, the Wellcome Trust and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the UK, and nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs have done instrumental research and response work in previous pandemics), would need to step in to fill the void. There is no border wall against disease.
Pandemics are an existential threat on par with climate change and nuclear conflict . We are
at a critical crossroads, where we must either take the steps needed to prepare for this threat or become
even more vulnerable. It is only a matter of time before we are hit by a deadlier, more contagious
pandemic. Will we be ready?
Strengthening international law is critical to thwarting terrorism and the abuses of
counter terrorism.
Duffy, ’13 [Helen, practiced international law for over twenty years. She has conducted high-level
human rights litigation before regional and international human rights courts and bodies, including the
European Court of Human Rights, the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, the InterAmerican Commission and Court of Human Rights, the Court of Justice of the Economic Community of
West Africa, UN human rights bodies, and intervened in national courts. Helen holds the Gieskes Chair
and is a Professor of International Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law at Leiden
University; The War on Terror' and International Law; 2013-12-18;
https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/handle/1887/22937/000-1-Duffy-20-11-2013.pdf?sequence=3]
Acts of international terrorism, such as the atrocities committed on 11 September 2001(‘9/11’) and others since then highlight
the critical importance of the international rule of law and the terrible consequences of its disregard.
Ultimately, however, the impact of such attacks depends on the responses to them, and in turn on the reaction to
those responses. To the extent that the lawlessness of terrorism is met with unlawfulness, unlawfulness with
impunity, the long-term implications for the rule of law, and the peace, stability and justice it serves,
will be grave. Undermining the authority of law can only lay the foundation for future violations,
whether by terrorists or by states committing abuses in the name of counter-terrorism. Conversely, so far as
states operate within the law, and bring it to bear on those responsible for terrorism and crimes committed
in the name of counter-terrorism, the authority of law can ultimately be reasserted and the system of
law strengthened.
Terrorist attack risks extinction.
Alexander, ‘3 [Yonah, Prof and Director of Inter-University for Terrorism Studies, “Terrorist attack
risks extinction;” Washington Times, August 27, 2003;
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2003/aug/27/20030827-084256-8999r/]
Last week's brutal
suicide bombings in Baghdad and Jerusalem have once again illustrated dramatically that the
international community failed, thus far at least, to understand the magnitude and implications of the
terrorist threats to the very survival of civilization itself. Even the United States and Israel have for decades tended to
regard terrorism as a mere tactical nuisance or irritant rather than a critical strategic challenge to their national security concerns. It is not
surprising, therefore, that on September 11, 2001, Americans were stunned by the unprecedented tragedy of 19 al Qaeda terrorists striking a
devastating blow at the center of the nation's commercial and military powers. Likewise, Israel and its citizens, despite the collapse of the Oslo
Agreements of 1993 and numerous acts of terrorism triggered by the second intifada that began almost three years ago, are still "shocked" by
each suicide attack at a time of intensive diplomatic efforts to revive the moribund peace process through the now revoked cease-fire
arrangements (hudna). Why are the United States and Israel, as well as scores of other countries affected by the universal nightmare of modern
terrorism surprised by new terrorist "surprises"? There are many reasons, including misunderstanding of the manifold specific factors that
contribute to terrorism's expansion, such as lack of a universal definition of terrorism, the religionization of politics, double standards of morality,
weak punishment of terrorists, and the exploitation of the media by terrorist propaganda and psychological warfare. Unlike their historical
counterparts, contemporary terrorists have introduced a new scale of violence in terms of conventional and unconventional threats and impact.
The internationalization
and brutalization of current and future terrorism make it clear we have entered an
Age of Super Terrorism (e.g. biological, chemical, radiological, nuclear and cyber) with its serious
implications concerning national, regional and global security concerns.
Open Borders Answers
Even if the alternative/counterplan gets rid of borders, further re-territorialization is
inevitable.
Tuathail 96 (Gearoid, Asst Prof. of Geography @ Virgina Polytechnic Inst.itute, “Visions and Vertigo:
Postmodernity and the writings of Global Space,” Critical Geopolitics, 1996)
While it is important not to exaggerate the degree of globalization and deterritorialization, these and other material transformations have rendered
the rigidities of the modern sociospatial triad of the interstate system (state sovereignty, territorial integrity, and community identity) increasingly
problematic. This heavily mythologized
triad of state-territory-community was never perfectly set and stable
in any country, but its instability and precariousness are becoming more and more pronounced as places are denationalized and globalized
by transnational flows. These tendencies were occurring well before the dramatic collapse of Communism and subsequent disintegration of the
territorial organization of the Eastern bloc and Soviet empire after 1989. This implosion of the geopolitical order of the Cold War starkly
foregrounded the degree to which the post-World War II world order had come apart and placed the meaning of the “West,” “Europe,” and the
every
deterritorialization creates the conditions for a reterritorialization of order using fragments of
“United States” as sociospatial identities in crisis, thus provoking the experience of vertigo we have noted. But
the beliefs, customs, practices, and narratives of the old splintered world order. Out of the
experience of vertigo, newly imagined visions of state, territory, and community are projected in an effort to
restablize and reterritorialize identity amid global flux. As one order of space unravels, new orders are deployed to
retriangulate local foregrounds against global backgrounds into new productions of global space.
Perm: do plan and then counterplan/kritik. Smaller steps pave the way for broader
acceptance of open borders.
The alternative’s/counterplan’s attempt to wish away borders is built on a politics of
universal friendship built upon the designation of an inhuman enemy, enabling
endless violence.
Rasch 3 (William, Henry, Prof of Germanic Studies @ Indiana U, “Human Rights as Geopolitics:” Cultural Critique 54 120-14, 2003)
Yes, this passage attests to the antiliberal prejudices of an unregenerate Eurocentric conservative with a pronounced affect for the
counterrevolutionary and Catholic South of Europe. It seems to resonate with the apologetic mid-twentieth-century Spanish reception of Vitoria
that wishes to justify the Spanish civilizing mission in the Americas. But the contrast between Christianity and humanism is not just prejudice; it
is also instructive, because with it, Schmitt tries to grasp something both disturbing and elusive about the modern world—namely, the apparent
fact that the
liberal and humanitarian attempt to construct a world of universal friendship produces, as if by internal
necessity, ever new enemies . For Schmitt, the Christianity of Vitoria, of Salamanca, Spain, 1539, represents a concrete, spatially
imaginable order, centered (still) in Rome and, ultimately, Jerusalem. This, with its divine revelations, its Greek philosophy, and its Roman
language and institutions, is the polis. This is civilization, and outside its walls lie the barbarians. The humanism that Schmitt opposes is, in his
words, a philosophy of absolute
humanity. By virtue of its universality and abstract normativity, it has no
localizable polis, no clear distinction between what is inside and what is outside. Does humanity
embrace all humans? Are there no gates to the city and thus no barbarians outside? If not, against
whom or what does it wage its wars? We can understand Schmitt's concerns in the following way: Christianity distinguishes
between believers and nonbelievers. Since nonbelievers can become believers, they must be of the same category of being. To be human, then, is
the horizon within which the distinction between believers and nonbelievers is made. That is, humanity per se is not part of the distinction, but is
that which makes the distinction possible. However, once
the term used to describe the horizon of a distinction also
becomes that distinction's positive pole, it needs its negative opposite . If humanity is both the horizon and
the positive pole of the distinction that that horizon enables, then the negative pole can only be something that lies
beyond that horizon, can only be something completely antithetical to horizon and positive pole alike—can only, in
other words, be inhuman. As Schmitt says: Only with the concept of the human in the sense of absolute humanity does there appear as the
other side of this concept a specially new enemy, the inhuman. In the history of the nineteenth century, setting off the inhuman from the human is
followed by an even deeper split, the one between the superhuman and the subhuman. In the same way that the human creates the inhuman, so in
the history of humanity the superhuman brings about with a dialectical necessity the subhuman as its enemy twin.9 This "two-sided aspect of the
ideal of humanity" (Schmitt 1988, Der Nomos der Erde, 72) is a theme Schmitt had already developed in his The Concept of the Political (1976)
and his critiques of liberal pluralism (e.g., 1988, Positionen und Begriffe, 151-65). His complaint there is that liberal pluralism is in fact
not in the least pluralist but reveals itself to be an overriding monism, the monism of humanity. Thus, despite the
claims that pluralism allows for the individual's freedom from illegitimate constraint , Schmitt presses the point home that
political opposition to liberalism is itself deemed illegitimate . Indeed, liberal pluralism, in Schmitt's eyes, reduces the political to
the social and economic and thereby nullifies all truly political opposition by simply excommunicating its opponents from the High Church of
Humanity. After all, only
an unregenerate barbarian could fail to recognize the irrefutable benefits of the liberal
order.
Borders are inevitable - the alt/counterplan fails - borders are ontologically
entrenched in human perception of difference. The 1AC is not an apology for the
status quo but engages in an ethical act that resolves the problems of the squo.
Williams 3 (John, Senior Lecturer at the University of Durham, “Territorial Borders, International Ethics
and Geography: Do Good Fences Still Make Good Neighbours?,” Geopolitics, Summer, pgs. 37-40,
2003)
Thus a more hermeneutic approach than Finnemore and Sikkink’s to norms in constructivism offers an account of the normatively charged and
ethically important role of the rules, norms and principles of behaviour that states have evolved through practice over a substantial historical
period. It
is possible to engage in a critical ethical investigation of territorial borders as fences that reflects the
ontological sedimentation of these foundational elements of the international system, but that does not have to
become an apologia for the status quo . Ontological assumptions are essential to any enquiry and they ought to be selfconsciously made. However, a postpositivist ethics interrogating the immanent ethical potential of the world as it has been constructed needs
these assumptions to reflect the here and now. A neo-classical constructivism, allied to an awareness of the importance and implication of
methodological choices indebted to more ontologically minimalist positions, offers a useful mechanism for ethical investigation into territorial
borders. Defending the Ethics of Territorial Borders The foregoing discussion leads us to two issues to discuss in relation to developing a partial
and limited defence of the ethics of territorial borders. The ontological strength of territorial borders leads to questions about the ethical
component of the depth of practice that supports this. Here, the article wishes to point to evidence that borders of some sort, including territorial
borders, are deeply rooted in ethics. The second ethical issue that arises relates to the defence of a neo-classical constructivist mode of enquiry
into international relations. This is an ethically consequentialist account that looks at the desirable elements of practice that flow from the more
fundamental ethical role of borders. Turning to the first of these tasks, it
is implausible to assert that institutions as enduring as
territorial borders-as-fences inextricably linked to the sovereign state have endured for so long and are so
entrenched unless borders are in some way representative of a need for division in human ethical life. There
is evidence in both the material already surveyed and from elsewhere in normative and ethical accounts of division, distinction and differentiation
to support the idea that the ontological strength of territorial borders in international relations can be connected to a deeprooted need for division
in human ethical life. In relation to the material at the heart of this paper, territorial borders are synonymous with division. ‘Boundaries, by
definition, constitute lines of separation or contact. … The point of contact or separation usually creates an “us” and an “Other” identity.’62 In
their idealised essentialism they divide zones of sovereign control; they divide inside from outside; they divide foreign from domestic; they divide
our identities as citizens; they divide national communities; they divide those to whom we owe primary allegiance from those who come second
(if anywhere) in moral calculation; they divide us from them. The
endurance of borders and boundaries in human society, whether
they be territorial borders or otherwise, implies that borders and the need to create an ‘us’ and an ‘other’ are very
powerfully entrenched in human relations and our ability to identify and understand ourselves. The critique
of reified sovereign territoriality in political geography does not lead to the abandonment of territorial borders. Instead they are reinterpreted as
features of hegemony, for Agnew and Corbridge, of power for Tuathail and of identity for Newman, requiring the re-territorialisation, rather than
the deterritorialisation, of social life under conditions of globalisation. The anthropological work of Donnan and Wilson points to the need for
boundary distinctions between social groups and the vital role that these play in the maintenance and development of identity.63 Frances
Harbour’s survey of universal ethical propositions, also drawing on anthropological work, suggests a necessary division in human ethical life. By
extension, the power-riddled, historically conditioned, accident prone and even arbitrary, careless or plain misguided creation of territorial
borders does have deep roots. Borders, including territorial borders, may be inescapable in international politics not just for reasons of power, but
for reasons of right, too. Recalling Hutching’s injunction not to separate these into essentially incommensurable categories of thought we can
argue that the weight of evidence about the ubiquity of borders points to their being a necessary part of human life, and a basic category of ethical
thought about that life. Philosophical weight can also be brought to bear in defence of a view of borders and boundaries as being part of the
human condition through the work of Hannah Arendt. She famously argued that ‘we are all the same, that is, human, in such a way that nobody is
ever the same as anyone else who lived, lives or will live’.64 The unique, distinctive individual finds their selfunderstanding through interaction
with fellow human beings with whom they share community and in spaces where they can meet as equals. This equality importantly includes an
equality of community membership granting them a set of shared ideas, experiences and values, rather than some sort of de-contextualised
equality such as that experienced behind a Rawlsian veil of ignorance.65 Arendt’s account emphasises the requirement for communities to retain
their distinctiveness from one another, including through the use of borders and boundaries. [H]uman dignity needs a new guarantee which can be
found only in a new political principle, in a new law on earth, whose validity this time must comprehend the whole of humanity while its power
must remain strictly limited, rooted in and controlled by newly defined territorial entities.66 In simple terms, borders
can be seen as
either being prior to and creative of difference, or that difference is prior to and creative of borders. This stark
juxtaposition of opposites is resolved in favour of the latter option by the arguments that borders are social
phenomena and that the human condition is characterised by an essential diversity of human beings and
the necessary relationship between distinctive individuals and their communities. The durability and depth of
sedimentation of territorial borders as fences suggest that division, and division on a territorial basis, speaks to a
deepseated need of human identity and also in human ethics. We need to have reasons for granting a privileged position to
some that is not available to others, perhaps in the form of recognising rights and duties of special beneficence, and accepting that proximity, both
geographical and emotional, and location upon one side of the line on the map or the other, does make a difference.67 Territorial division in the
form of states is an important, but certainly not the only, aspect of this. The endurance of the territorial border-as-fence as the primary mechanism
for division in international politics cannot, though, be treated as prima facie ethically irrelevant or straightforwardly contingent. However, its
position as a social phenomenon also means that the creation and re-creation of the border-asfence has to be held up to constant ethical
questioning and critique. The arguments of tradition, culture and precedent as to who is to count and who is not, who is to be a citizen and who is
not, what the role of territory ought to be and how it should be delimited cannot be taken for granted.68 As the normative theorists insist, a part of
ethical analysis and enquiry is to constantly question dominant ethical arguments. This may be crucial in exploring the current location
of territorial borders and the enunciation of the role that they play, but such a critique may not be able to land an
ethical knock-out blow upon a feature of human ethical thought and life that seems to be highly durable .
Location and role may change, but that borders will have locations and play roles, and that these should be critically explored, may be a
fixture.
Perm: Do the counterplan/kritik. Counterplan is plan plus open borders.
Counterplan/kritik links to the politics disad(s) much harder than plan (base,
midterms, horse-trading). Counterplan/K alternative is far more radical than plan
and will provoke a much larger political reaction).
Open borders results in human commodification, worsening global income
inequality.
Eskow, ’15 [Richard, serves on the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies Board of Directors
and as a Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America’s Future; “Open Borders”: A Gimmick, Not a
Solution;” August 5, 2015; https://berniesanders.com/open-borders-a-gimmick-not-a-solution/]
“Open borders” is a recipe for the further commodification of human beings. It treats people as economic
inputs to be moved about the globe at the whim of global capital. It is neither rational nor humane, and it
has yet to receive the thorough public debunking it deserves. We need a systemic solution to global wealth inequality,
rather than intellectual gimmicks designed to promote exploitation and sow confusion.
Utopian counterplans are illegitimate: Open Borders is an unworldly, utopian
counterplan that will never occur in the real world. Removes focus from real world
policy options like the aff. for which specific education is far more likely to effect
social change. Voting issue for education.