In Chapter 10, I engage all three conceptual dimensions of world society as the basis for a closer examination of the role that non-state actors play in the greening of international society. In a first step, I discuss the normative aspirations of global environmentalism that animate non-state actors’ engagement with international diplomacy: how it relates to the Bull’s ‘great society of humankind’, the solidarist ideal of a world of individuals held together by common environmental values and identities; and whether the existence of multiple environmental values instead points to a more pluralist structure of environmental world society. In a second step, I review the role that non-state actors play in shaping the outcomes in interstate environmental politics, but I also consider the reverse perspective of how engagement with the world of diplomacy shapes global environmental activism. In the final part, I consider the question of an emerging integrated world society, which grows out of the ever-deeper involvement of states and non-state actors in the creation of global environmental governance.

In chapter 8, I explore how a solidarist logic of cooperation has pushed states to expand the scope for global environmental action via international institution-building and international law. I am interested in understanding the extent to which this emerging system of global environmental governance has brought about a gradual greening of the sovereignty norm – a key marker of environmental solidarisation. This raises several key questions: To what extent has the consolidation of GIS’s commitment to environmental stewardship gone hand in hand with a strengthening of the solidarist agenda in international relations? Has the rise of global environmentalism served to redefine the meaning of sovereignty in an age of global ecological interdependencies? It promoted a deeper sense of common values and interests that transcend national boundaries, thereby helping GIS to evolve from a ‘thin’ to a ‘thick’ sense of community and common purpose?

An increasing number of countries, especially the UK, have expanded their legal powers to deprive citizens of their nationality in response to terrorism. The trigger for the mounting focus on this tactic has been the advent of Islamic State and the phenomenon of Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTFs) travelling to Iraq and Syria. The weaponization of nationality has therefore been adapted to this situation so that citizens can be treated as if they were foreigners. In this way, the FTFs can be divested of citizenship and of rights. This paper will explain these developments against the declining inspiration of ‘cosmopolitan citizenship’. So, the paper first needs to explore notions of citizenship and then to look at the decline of ‘cosmopolitan citizenship’ which provides space for counter-terrorism weaponization. The paper does not contend that cosmopolitan citizenship forbids any weaponization but highlights important provisos which draw attention to human rights and other principled and policy constraints which also must be explored and weighed.

This chapter builds upon three streams of experience by its author: (a) one related to his six-year term as the first UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism (2005-2011), namely the identification of the absence of a proper international definition of terrorism as an important source of human rights abuses, (b) his observation of actual court practice and media coverage where definitional-conceptual elements of terrorism, in particular as to its aims, appear to be ignored despite being one of the cornerstones on which those legal definitions were built, and (c) his academic work pointing out that the instrumentalization of the human person, in breach of Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative, comes through as a characteristic both of acts of terrorism and of human rights violations committed by States in the name of countering terrorism.

On the basis of reflecting on these experiences, and departing from his own best practice definition built on Security Council Resolution 1566 (2004) and included in his last report to the UN Human Rights Council, the author now proposes the removal of any subjective aim element from international definitions of terrorism, and its replacement with the objective element of the act amounting to the instrumentalization of human beings, typically victims of terrorism.

Predictive technologies have become an inseparable part of counterterrorism decision-making. In the past decades, the United Nations Security Council has advanced and legitimized this reliance on predictive technologies, including the substandard levels of certainty and proof they entail, justifying opaque predictive epistemology in counter-terrorism decision-making both within and outside the SC sanction regime. Based on an interdisciplinary scholarship on law, science, and technology, as well as empirical observations from concrete battlefield operations, this chapter identifies three problems stemming from the reliance on predictive technologies in counter-terrorism decision-making. First, the outputs of predictive technologies - often perceived as objective, complete, and neutral - mask the subjective and speculative elements involved in their production. Second, the combination of predictive technologies and opaque epistemology embraces uncertainty as the baseline for knowledge, resulting in a transition from juridical to administrative decision-making process. Third, erroneous decisions often remain unaccounted for, as technology systems are being blamed for mistaken, technology-assisted, human decisions. The chapter develops concrete recommendations to mitigate these problems, and advises the SC to consider the effects of its legitimation of opaque evidentiary standards in the context of the sanctions regime, on the justification of these problematic norms in the context of counter-terrorism battlefield operations.