Climate Change as Spatial Change: Impetus to Rethink State Obligations and Embrace Supra-Sovereign Knowledge.

Recent escalations in the severity of extreme weather events in Europe and Asia have set the stage for a rethink of international relations as a policy pathway towards dealing with climate change. A rethink of state obligations in international relations requires a refocus towards the social contract undergirding sovereignty and an acceptance that we are into the era of supra-sovereign consequences. Global warming attests to this expansive spatialisation of consequences. This article argues that the State can take two practical steps to cope with climate change: the spatialisation of obligations to citizens to protect them against extreme weather; and the need for officials and citizenry to accept that the sovereign state owes moral obligations to complex chains of culpability across geographical borders that transcend sovereignty itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]