World Federalism and the Portuguese

Winslow Homer, The Blue Boy, 1873.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed are the author's own.

Da minha aldeia vejo quanto da terra se pode ver no Universo... Por isso a minha aldeia é tão grande como outra terra qualquer Porque eu sou do tamanho do que vejo E não do tamanho da minha altura... (...)

From my village I see as much of the earth as can be seen in the Universe... That is why my village is as vast as any other land on Earth, For I measure my world by the reach of my gaze, Not by the arbitrary height of my stature... (...)

Alberto Caeiro (Fernando Pessoa), O Guardador de Rebanhos, VII

For the Portuguese, world federalism is often dismissed as an obscure term or an abstract utopian ideal. Yet our literary tradition offers another way of looking at the question. Through voices such as Fernando Pessoa’s heteronym Alberto Caeiro in O Guardador de Rebanhos, Portuguese literature has long explored the relationship between people, their surroundings and the world they inhabit. These questions of local belonging and human connection are also central to world federalism.

Here, Caeiro’s intuition challenges the artificial importance we attach to bureaucratic borders, bringing us back to the tangible reality of human experience. Viewed through our current political reality, world federalism need not mean erasing local identity. Rather, it can provide an institutional framework to protect our rivers, culture and local communities, ensuring that our own “village” retains meaningful sovereignty while participating in a wider system of global cooperation. Thus, this article explores how world federalism might offer a pragmatic framework for addressing some of the challenges facing the Portuguese people, both at home and across the diaspora.

Currently, Portugal faces a forthcoming ecological disaster on its borders and territory, as a consequence of the severe desertification of its southern regions, hydrological stress, coastal retreat, extreme forest fires, the acidification of its coastal waters, and rapid biodiversity loss, among many others. In such instances, a world federation could significantly help mitigate, build long-term resilience against, and in some cases even resolve these problems, where national isolation serves as no defence at all. It could, for example, tackle global emissions and regulate many polluting corporate sectors that current national policies cannot touch (in most cases, given that carbon leakage and industrial offshoring routinely undermine individual state regulations), giving the world real tools to reduce climate impacts. Furthermore, it would have the power to enforce transboundary cooperation between communities in a binding way.

For instance, regarding shared water resources, Portugal and Spain already share major river basins, such as the Tejo, Douro, Guadiana, and Minho, under the bilateral Albufeira Convention (1998). However, during acute climate-induced droughts, bilateral agreements face severe enforcement strain because each nation naturally prioritises its own domestic supply upstream, as documented in the 2021-2022 reports by the Commission for the Application and Development of the Albufeira Convention (CADC), when Spanish water management authorities, deploying impediments on the Douro basin, restricted minimum flow discharges during the hot-summer dry period of 2022 to safeguard their own agricultural sectors. Here, a world federal structure elevates shared river basins to protected ecological commons, ensuring that upstream retention does not leave Portugal depleted during dry spells, therefore lessening the devastating effects of desertification and hydrological stress. Likewise, this governance would help significantly slow coastal erosion and the advancement of the coastline by tackling the global drivers of climate change. On a broader ecological level, federal coordination would facilitate cross-border cooperation to protect native biodiversity and manage ecosystem restoration far more efficiently, including, for example, the removal of invasive species, such as the Asian Hornet (Vespa velutina), which, according to recent reports from Portugal’s ICNF (Instituto da Conservação da Natureza e das Florestas), has been confirmed in all mainland administrative districts of Portugal, preying on honeybees and native insects and disrupting local ecosystems, and while the ICNF map illustrates the domestic severity of the invasion, local trapping alone cannot prevent re-infestation without mandatory, coordinated containment protocols across neighbouring borders.

There are also many geopolitical and economic realities that Portugal currently faces that world federalism would considerably help with. There is a systemic deviation in how global capital currently flows, where many private corporations exploit offshore tax havens, causing massive discrepancies on the global economic scale and starving public coffers. While multilateral frameworks like the OECD’s 15% global minimum corporate tax deal, which is also adopted by the EU, represent a step forward, they remain vulnerable to national carve-outs, political lobbying, and selective enforcement, as evidenced by major economic powers carving out exceptions for their domestic industries; for that, a world federation could enforce universal economic standards and binding tax floors without room for national exceptions or regulatory arbitrage, ensuring that corporate wealth contributes fairly to public healthcare, education, and housing.

Crucially, the idea of sharing sovereignty is not a foreign or alien concept to the Portuguese people. Through the European Union, Portugal already participates in a model of pooled sovereignty; its people greatly benefit from Schengen open borders, cohesion funds for regional development, the Euro currency, and vital emergency assistance via the EU Civil Protection Mechanism during catastrophic fire seasons, such as the wildfires of 2017. These mechanisms demonstrate that surrendering absolute unilateral control in exchange for supranational rules yields concrete security and economic stability that a small state could never achieve in isolation. World federalism is simply the logical next step: extending democratic, rules-based governance to the global scale. In addition, a world federation would greatly reduce one of the most unfortunate and tragic realities of today’s world: interstate wars. With the federalisation of the world, instead of citizens arming and going to die for one’s nation, delegates sit and resolve disputes through binding democratic arbitration. This would not only prevent bloodshed, but it would also mean that much of the money currently wasted on defence budgets would be redirected to essential social fields. Furthermore, regional border disputes like the historical Olivença dispute would lose their historic heat under a shared federal structure, preventing potential sources of nationalist friction.

Likewise, this federal framework could make moving between countries as easy worldwide as Schengen has made it in Europe, and facilitate international travel and mobility. Happily, many old Portuguese diaspora communities could easily reconnect with Portugal and long-forgotten family, creating more social stability for the Portuguese and sharing our rich culture throughout the world. While this global openness naturally means that different cultures will interact and influence local life, a world federalist movement can and should actively protect each unique culture. For Portuguese culture specifically, this framework represents a vital step for its long-term preservation. Some express concern that shared global media and interconnected cultural flows will blur unique regional identities and Portuguese expressions. However, under the core federal principle of subsidiarity, power over culture, language, and municipal affairs remains strictly in local hands (for instance, a world federation has no mandate to standardise or alter local languages). Instead, by guaranteeing that decisions are made at the lowest possible administrative level, subsidiarity directly aligns with Portuguese political interests by shielding municipal heritage and regional traditions from external bureaucratic overreach. And, by embedding linguistic rights into international law and elevating Portuguese within global administration and digital networks, a world federation serves as a protective shield for A Língua Portuguesa far more effectively than isolated national policies can.

Finally, world federalism is not a matter of letting Portuguese culture, land, or nation fade away; in fact, it is a system that emphasises the importance of local identity and provides the exact institutional framework needed to protect Portuguese culture, as well as the wildlife and the land on which Portugal stands. It secures a livable environment for the many generations to come who will live here, and in many ways, it acts as a vital bridge, reconnecting long-forgotten communities with their true roots in Portugal.

Glória à Humanidade

Glory to Humanity

About the author

Rodrigo Martins, also known as Rocco Bercar, was born in Portugal. He holds a deep passion for exploring a wide range of disciplines, with a special reverence for those that contemplate the natural world, such as physics and philosophy. He volunteers with Young World Federalists.