Terra Nullius

[ˈtɛrə.nʌˈlaɪəs]

Related terms: Terra Firma, Terra Flux, Terra Incognita

Terra Nullius is »no man’s land« (in German, Niemandsland). The concept is used as a legal strategy to mobilize and appropriate a territory with its resources by claiming that it is nobody’s property. The doctrine claims land by asserting its sovereignty. This legal fiction imagines lands as being devoid of life and erases its inhabitants’ rights to the land. In the Critical Zone there is by definition no land that is not inhabited.