In November 2021, the Barbadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade signed an agreement with Decentraland, with a view of finalising agreements with other Metaverse platforms such as Somnium Space and Superworld. The range of contemplated are various: how digital land will be purposed to house the relevant virtual embassies and consulates; how e-visas will be granted; and the construction of teleporters enabling users to move their avatars through the metaverse. The appeal of the program to the ministry was one of numerical reach with minimal logistical problems: why stop at the 18 embassies and consulates now when you could have a base in 190 or so countries?
This year, the Seoul Metropolitan Government, after its November 2021 announcement about moving some of its functions into the metaverse, released a beta version of its “virtual municipal world” touted as Metaverse Seoul. As Cities Today reports, the city “aims to have a metaverse environment for all administrative services, including economy, culture, and tourism” in place by 2026.
Addressing the legal context of a submerged state will raise novel problems. The issue is very much at the forefront of Kofe’s mind. What is one to do with maritime boundaries and the resources located within the relevant waters, notwithstanding inundation? And that’s just the start of it.
This issue has already preoccupied a number of legal authorities and bodies. In November 2012, the International Law Association (ILA) established the Committee on International Law and Sea Level Rise to study the possible impacts of rising sea levels and its “implications under international law of the partial and complete inundation of state territory, or depopulation thereof, in particularly of small island and low-lying states”. The second part to the Committee’s mandate is to develop proposals to develop international law regarding such losses of territory, the impact on maritime zones “including the impacts on statehood, nationality and human rights.”
The implications of such losses are clear enough. Should the loss of a state to inundation and submergence also result in a loss of citizenship? The risk of statelessness is genuine enough, and it remains a source of much debate whether treaty law or international customary law is capable of addressing the issue. As legal scholar Marija Dobric concludesin a 2019 study, “it is unclear whether the people affected may be considered ‘stateless people’ within the meaning of the Conventions on Statelessness and, even if they did, how far that would serve to protect their rights effectively.”
Transferring the actual, tangible world to the metaverse with all its official and legal implications will induce a number of headaches. This near mystical transition to the ether of the virtual world sounds remarkable and, on some level, dangerously misguided. It relocates one set of challenges for another. Issues of privacy (yes, where did that go?), moderating what content goes into such a model, and how people are to conduct themselves, are pressing points that are simply not being addressed seriously.
Excerpted: ‘Tuvalu, Climate Change and the Metaverse’. Courtesy: Counterpunch.org
The writer is a freelance contributor. He tweets/posts @vivantive and can be reached at: omar@vivantive.comPakistan...
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