LAND AND LEGALITY

Rosemary Rayfuse is a teacher of International Law at New South Wales University in Australia and Lund University in Sweden and this contribution to the press shows she is concerned about a future legal problem. "Rising sea levels could threaten the existence of small island states such as Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and the Maldives. If the international community cannot or will not slow global warming, the least it can do is help those states prepare for life after land by recognizing a new category of state - the deterritorialized state. If we do nothing and these nations become uninhabitable, their citizens will not only become displaced persons seeking refuge in other countries; they will also lose control of their vast maritime zones, including valuable fisheries and mineral deposits, which will likely become the property of neighboring states or the global commons." (New York Times, 18 July) It says much for the moral outlook of capitalism that its scholars are more concerned about the legality of fishery and mineral rights than the plight of thousands of workers made homeless and poverty-stricken by capitalism's incessant drive for profit, that causes global warming in the first place.