Overview of Léa Rival´s thesis. 

Across the globe, communities living under colonial or non-sovereign arrangements face overlapping struggles for political voice, environmental protection, and economic dignity. Nowhere is this more visible than in the United States’ overseas territories, where residents hold U.S. citizenship yet remain excluded from full democratic participation. In places such as Guåhan (Guam) and Puerto Rico, environmental degradation is not an isolated problem but deeply entangled with colonial governance, external decision-making, and constrained self-determination.

While constitutional and economic scholarship often portrays non-sovereign territories as “better off” due to their political affiliation with metropolitan states, perspectives from environmental and community advocates complicate this narrative. Their experiences suggest that socioenvironmental injustice is a structural feature of non-sovereignty itself, shaping who bears environmental harm, who benefits from development, and who ultimately decides the future of land and resources.

This article examines how advocates in Guåhan and Puerto Rico articulate connections between environmental justice and self-determination, and why their perspectives challenge dominant assumptions about the benefits of territorial status.

Colonial Status and Environmental Vulnerability

Guåhan and Puerto Rico are two of the five inhabited U.S. overseas territories acquired in 1898. Despite differences in geography, culture, and political history, both share a legal status that places them at the margins of U.S. democracy. Residents cannot vote in presidential elections and are represented in Congress only by non-voting delegates. Crucially, neither territory has full authority over foreign policy, trade, or environmental governance.

This political arrangement shapes how environmental decisions are made. In Puerto Rico, fiscal oversight imposed by the U.S. federal government has constrained public spending and prioritised austerity, privatisation, and external investment. In Guåhan, the island’s strategic military role in the Asia-Pacific has driven extensive land use by the U.S. Department of Defense, often at the expense of environmental protection and Indigenous land rights.

In both contexts, communities describe environmental harm as inseparable from political exclusion. Development projects, infrastructure expansion, and resource extraction frequently proceed without meaningful consent, while avenues for accountability remain limited.

Puerto Rico: Privatisation, Displacement, and Environmental Injustice

In Puerto Rico, environmental justice struggles are closely tied to economic dependency and privatisation. Long before the devastation caused by Hurricanes Irma and María in 2017, the island faced deep structural inequalities shaped by externally driven development models. The hurricanes exposed the fragility of these arrangements, revealing how unevenly protection, recovery, and resources are distributed.

Advocates describe how post-disaster reconstruction accelerated processes of displacement and gentrification. Coastal developments, luxury housing projects, and tourism initiatives have increasingly restricted access to public land, particularly beaches and wetlands. These projects are often justified through narratives of economic growth and resilience, yet they disproportionately impact low-income communities and Afro-descendant populations.

Privatisation has also transformed essential services. The energy sector, heavily reliant on imported fossil fuels, has been widely criticised for its vulnerability, high costs, and environmental impact. Grassroots initiatives promoting decentralised renewable energy emerged in response to prolonged power outages after Hurricane María, but many of these community-led solutions have been sidelined in favour of large-scale, private-sector reforms.

Food and water access further illustrate how environmental justice intersects with colonial governance. Trade restrictions, including U.S. cabotage laws, increase the cost of imported goods and undermine local food systems. Rivers and watersheds face pollution and canalisation projects that prioritise short-term development over ecological sustainability, often advancing despite expert warnings and community opposition.

For many advocates, these patterns reveal a deeper problem: Puerto Rico’s limited autonomy prevents the island from pursuing development strategies aligned with its ecological realities and social needs. Environmental injustice, in this sense, is not accidental but embedded in a system where decisions are made elsewhere.

Guåhan: Militarisation, Indigenous Land, and Environmental Harm

In Guåhan, socioenvironmental justice is inseparable from Indigenous CHamoru identity and the island’s heavy militarisation. The U.S. military controls a significant portion of the island’s land, including areas of cultural, ecological, and ancestral significance. Decades of military activity have left a legacy of contamination affecting soil, water, and marine ecosystems.

Advocates describe how environmental damage accumulates through both visible and “slow” forms of harm: toxic waste sites, contaminated aquifers, habitat destruction, and the disruption of conservation efforts. While military institutions often promote environmental stewardship initiatives, these efforts are widely viewed as insufficient and contradictory, particularly when expansion projects continue to clear ancient forests or restrict access to traditional lands.

Political participation in environmental decision-making is also constrained. Environmental impact processes tend to limit public input to technical parameters, excluding broader questions of decolonisation, land rights, or demilitarisation. This narrows the space for meaningful dissent and reinforces the perception that Guåhan’s role as a strategic outpost outweighs the well-being of its inhabitants.

Economic pressures compound these challenges. Housing costs have risen alongside military expansion, while wages remain comparatively low. Like Puerto Rico, Guåhan relies heavily on imported food, a dependency rooted in colonial disruptions to traditional agriculture. For many advocates, these conditions threaten not only environmental sustainability but cultural survival.

Self-determination, in this context, is understood as the ability to protect land, practice Indigenous stewardship, and decide how the island engages with external powers.

Challenging the “Better Off” Narrative

Much of the academic literature on non-sovereign territories evaluates political status through economic indicators such as GDP, income levels, and access to metropolitan welfare systems. From this perspective, territories like Guåhan and Puerto Rico are often portrayed as beneficiaries of political affiliation, enjoying higher living standards than many small sovereign states.

However, perspectives from environmental and community advocates complicate this assessment. They highlight how economic benefits are unevenly distributed and accompanied by significant socioenvironmental costs. High living expenses, displacement, pollution, and vulnerability to disasters disproportionately affect local populations, while external actors reap the rewards of development.

Importantly, advocates do not argue that sovereignty is a guarantee of prosperity or stability. Many acknowledge that independent states also face inequality, environmental degradation, and external pressures. Rather, they frame self-determination as a right to pursue locally defined priorities: to manage resources, respond to crises, and negotiate partnerships on their own terms.

From this standpoint, claims that territories are “better off” risk obscuring lived realities and reproducing paternalistic assumptions. They reduce self-determination to a technical calculation rather than recognising it as a political and ethical principle.

Self-Determination as Environmental Justice

Across both territories, socioenvironmental justice emerges as a holistic concept. It encompasses not only the fair distribution of environmental harms and benefits, but also recognition, participation, and cultural survival. Advocates act as educators, organisers, and implementers, working within constrained political systems to protect their communities while articulating alternative futures.

Their efforts challenge narrow definitions of environmentalism that separate ecological concerns from questions of power, history, and colonialism. They also highlight the limits of existing governance frameworks, which allow participation without granting genuine authority.

For organisations concerned with the rights of unrepresented and marginalised peoples, these cases underscore the importance of listening to local voices. They demonstrate that environmental justice cannot be achieved without addressing political status and that self-determination remains central to building sustainable and dignified futures.