Marco Genovesi, University of Nottingham.

Respublica Naturæ: Carl Schmitt Nomos and the Environment

The increasing seriousness of environmental degradation calls for a radical reform of the international system; however, the State-centered character of world politics cannot be overthrown, at least in the medium term, by a moral revolution rooted on ethical norms. My research starts from this assumption and tries to build a project of environmentalist reform of world politics based on Carl Schmitt’s concept of Nomos.

I argue that the environmental crisis, generated by our current industrial system of production and consumption, has led to the emergence of the environment as a new spatial dimension. The emergence of this new spatial dimension, not yet recognized but still existing, is undermining our present international order, and the whole international community has therefore the compelling need and the difficult mission to build a new Nomos of the Earth, a spatially-based international order that would consider the environment one of its constitutive dimensions.