Can a theory of territorial rights and resource use help us coordinate action across ontological differences? Environmental and Indigenous activists and scholars have shown that there exist different ontologies of land. This radical pluralism poses political difficulties for boundary-making because people on either side of a border may disagree on the value of the land, or even on the entities that constitute it: as when some people claim that there are “water spirits”, “sacred mountains” or “national security areas,” while others assert that there are no such things. These disagreements lead many to claim that those who hold these different ontologies of land live in different realities. Such disagreements spark fierce conflicts when they concern climate mitigation and water scarcity, for those require coordination in adjacent and overlapping territories, as well as planet-wide action. In this paper, I propose that a theory of territorial rights that offers water as a proxy for diverse foundational values can mediate these ontological disagreements. I show how water allows us to navigate such conflicts without relying on claims of universalism to bridge the divides. Everybody values water, although for different reasons. So water helps us appreciate ontological pluralism, as well as a common interest in its conservation. This gives us a thin common ground on which to negotiate. So, when no principled agreement over territorial rights is possible, water sustainability can provide the negotiating framework to sustain pragmatic political solutions and local compromises without oppression.
Paulina Ochoa Espejo is a political theorist who works at the intersection of democratic theory and the history of political thought. She focuses on popular sovereignty and borders. She has written about populism, the boundaries of the demos, migration and the right to exclude, the relation between democracy and territorial rights, and borders’ moral relevance. She also works on Latin American political thought. She is the author of On Borders: Territories, Legitimacy and the Rights of Place (Oxford University Press, 2020), The Time of Popular Sovereignty: Process and the Democratic State (Penn State University Press, 2011); and co-edited the Oxford Handbook of Populism (Oxford University Press, 2017 At present, she is finishing a co-authored textbook (Political Theory: A Global and Comparative Introduction, forthcoming with SAGE), and working on a monograph: Rights of Place: Territory, Property, and Jurisdiction in the Americas.