Nature moving borders

Last year, as Costa Rica and Nicaragua fought over a small piece of land, one of the issues was over how the Rio San Juan has moved over the past 100-150 years. If the river moves, does the border move too?

Rivers move a great deal over the course of decades, more than most other natural boundaries (like mountains). When boundaries are set by natural geography at a certain moment in time, the risk is that they will move in the future.

The river moving in Central America was one factor setting off a dispute. Are there other border disputes that could arise over similar natural events in the coming century?

While I don't think many mountains will be moving much (the Chile/Argentine border is defined by mountain peaks), it may be maritime boundaries are the big issue. Rising sea levels are likely to change shape of borders as they hit the sea, which can affect rights on fishing and deepsea oil drilling.

City-state secession

In one of this blog's first posts, I said one possible long-term (100 year) future for the region would be for some countries to split apart with city-states taking a role.

To build on that: What is the first city to secede from its national government in Latin America or the Caribbean?

Here are a few criteria that I think would make it more likely. It would need to be a city that is not the capital or center of national politics. It would probably need to be a city with access to a coastline or at least a border, because being landlocked and surrounded would not be helpful. It would probably also need to be a city that has a different political, economic or social makeup from the capital or the national demographics.

In the context of modern Latin America, there is one city that fits all of those criteria: Guayaquil, Ecuador.  I could easily imagine a narrative that leads to it calling for separation from the national government in Quito in the coming decades.

There are a few other possibilities if you look 50 years out. There are some towns on the Caribbean coast of Central America, particularly in Honduras and Nicaragua, that could hypothetically call for full separation from the national government as they've been generally ignored throughout their history anyway. Rio or Sao Paulo or some cities in Northern Brazil (Recife?) could hypothetically make the attempt, though it's hard to imagine a political future today in which they do. I could also imagine an outlier scenario in which the Yucatan or Baja California areas of Mexico could make that attempt.

None of these scenarios are likely. I don't intend to predict that any of this will occur. However, whatever happens in the next 50 years to the borders of the region, it will be something that is considered an "unlikely" scenario today. Only by looking at the current map and imagining various possible futures can we really think about how Latin America can change 50 or 100 years out.

Could a country's land be bought?

Investors including China and Saudi Arabia have made Latin America part of the global land grab. Plots of land have been purchased or leased directly and indirectly for agriculture and other development. In response, Brazil, Argentina and others have passed laws to restrict foreign ownership of land.

What if a country made the opposite policy, making its land easier to buy for foreigners? And what if there was a rich and willing investor? This creates a hypothetical scenario in which well over 50% of a country's land is purchased or leased by foreign investors. At an extreme, a foreign power or corporation could buy an entire state or province and gain almost full control over it.

Does the rest of the region get a say in this? This is a question that goes right to the heart of the sovereignty debate in Latin America. On one hand, a country should have a right to sell, lease or give its own land to whomever it wishes. On the other hand, the idea that a country could literally sell its own sovereign territory and leave its neighbors dealing with a foreign power controlling a border area impacts regional security.

Shrinking islands

50 years from now rising sea levels will likely start to eat away at a number of coastlines. This will be a problem throughout the hemisphere, but will be a particularly big hit to the islands in the Caribbean. Most are rather small and don't have much space to lose.

Do they accept the lost land? Do they build walls to try to keep out the rising ocean? Do the build platforms over the sea? Do they build floating portions to the island? Do they build skyscrapers upwards, regaining lost ground vertically that they lose horizontally? Do they build underneath the water?

Every country will likely approach the problem differently. For those islands that choose to use structures to maintain their lost land, I would be interested to know some of the international law questions that could be raised by them building on top of or under the waves. This could go to how we define maritime boundaries.

A South American competitor to GPS

The United States maintains the Global Positioning System (GPS) of 32 satellites for anyone to use. How nice of us.

Still, some countries either don't trust the US or want their own systems for a variety of national and technical reasons. Russia has a system (GLONASS) that provides and alternative. China and Europe are launching their own systems as well, though they remain several years away.

Is there a reason for South America to launch its own system as well? It could be useful to have another alternative and one under the region's control. It would be a huge boost for R&D spending as well as science and engineering expertise in the region. At the same time, it could be seen as a big waste of time and money when there are other freely available platforms.

Brazil and others are discussing a South American space agency run through UNASUR. Brazil is also planning to launch new earth monitoring satellites, a priority that ranks much higher for the region than an alternative GPS system. Several countries have partnered with China to launch satellites in recent years, mostly for telecommunications.

This isn't something for the near future, but there is no reason to think the region couldn't be running its own limited constellation of satellites for global positioning at some point inside of fifty years.

Or, alternatively and perhaps more realistically, Latin America could partner with the US, China or someone else to own and operate a piece of the system. They could share the costs and the benefits.

What will Latin America's borders look like in 100 years?

Though some borders are obvious due to natural formations (Chile-Argentina), most are simply lines on a map. They started with the Spanish and then were greatly reshaped in the 19th century after independence.

The 20th century was odd in that Latin America's borders barely moved. Sure, there were a few small shifts. There remain several border disputes over relatively small plots of territory. But nothing big.

To think that the borders will remain nearly the same in the coming hundred years is to embrace the 20th century and miss the rest of human history. We're more likely to see big and completely unexpected shifts than to see absolute stagnation for another century.

Here's a few possibilities. These are NOT meant as predictions, but rather to begin thinking about potential ways that borders could move, even if it seems very unlikely today:

• A larger regional structure will form as countries merge under a single federal government. Various countries in Central America may merge into a single unit. Hispañola seems like a likely candidate. Or Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador could combine back into a Bolivarian unit. Or perhaps UNASUR pulls off the big integration effort and we end up with a president of a United South America.
• Countries break apart and new countries or city-states emerge. Rio and Sao Paulo could become one or even two separate countries, completely split off from Brasilia. Bolivia and Peru could both break into two or three parts. Chile could divide itself into multiple long and skinny countries. Mexico could break up.
• Countries could forcibly take territory. Mexico could take over Guatemala. Venezuela could take over Guyana. Argentina could take over Uruguay and Paraguay. Or perhaps the US takes a new state. While violent armed conflict is off the table today, a worst case scenario in 50 years could have countries fighting each other again and taking territory from each other.
• Countries could cede territory, leaving lawless and (officially) ungoverned spaces or new countries. Brazil could decide it doesn't want all of the Amazon. Colombia could give up some of the states where violent actors remain present. A Central American country could decide a portion of the Caribbean coast is simply owned by the indigenous communities there and give up all claims on it.

As I said, I don't expect any of those predictions to happen, but I do expect some larger movement of borders in the coming hundred years. The map in 2112 will not look like the map in 2012. It's all a matter of how and when.