Fossil Capital in the Caribbean: The Toxic Role of Regulatory Havens in Climate Change

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Atiles, Jose; Whyte, David
• 署名单位: University of Illinois System; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; University of London; Queen Mary University London
• 刊物名称: REGULATION & GOVERNANCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1748-5983
• DOI: 10.1111/rego.70001
• 发表日期: 2025
• 页码: 469-481
• 关键词: tax havens; WEALTH; geography; secrecy; REFORM; STATES

摘要

Secrecy jurisdictions play a crucial role in the legal framework perpetuating climate change. This paper demonstrates how these jurisdictions sustain the dynamics of climate change by enabling capital accumulation rooted in environmental degradation. A regulatory approach to law and climate change must address the global nature of the legal structure that upholds exploitative and ecocidal social relationships. This paper argues that secrecy jurisdictions are a pivotal yet under-analyzed element of the global legal architecture that facilitates climate change. It, therefore, proposes the term regulatory havens to describe their purpose more adequately. Our analysis includes a case study of the Caribbean, as this geographical region operates as the epicenter for externalizing legal liabilities and extra-legal activities that contribute to climate change while also disproportionately suffering its impacts. The paper outlines how the corporate organizational structure prevalent in regulatory havens enable fossil fuel companies to shield themselves from liability, thus allowing them to detoxify fossil fuel assets. It then sets out a typology of mechanisms of avoidance that enable fossil fuel companies to secure key commercial advantages and operate under the radar of regulatory constraints. It briefly analyses the need to dismantle regulatory havens as a prerequisite for building a sustainable economy.