Justice and Natural Resources - Introduction

The paper proposes a "justice-based" reconstruction of legal rights to natural resources (i.e. collective, sovereign and territorial rights to natural resources belonging to states and their people) and shows how this reconstruction contributes to the conceptualization what is natural resource justice.

Journal of Political Philosophy, 2013

This paper investigates the significance, from the point of view of egalitarian justice, of patterns of attachment to natural resources. Section I establishes what is at stake in arguments about attachment as a source of special claims over resources. Section II shows why, by contrast to the view associated with Charles Beitz, for instance, attachment over natural resources should be taken seriously by egalitarians. But even if egalitarians should take attachment seriously, it is not clear just how and whether they could accommodate important attachments whilst also holding firm to their egalitarian commitments. Section III, however, provides an account of just how egalitarians can accommodate good attachment-based claims within their accounts of justice, and also spells out the implications of that accommodation for theories of global justice. Section IV considers but rejects an alternative account of how we should accommodate attachments, and concludes by arguing that egalitarianism contains far greater resources for taking important attachments seriously than we might otherwise suppose.

Texts reviewed J. Connelly and G. Smith (1999) Politics and the Environment: From Theory to Practice, London: Routledge, £15.99 pb. A. Dobson (ed.) (1999) Fairness and Futurity: Essays on Environmental Sustainability and Social Justice, Oxford: Oxford University Press, £16.99. T. Hayward and J. O’Neill (eds) (1997) Justice, Property and the Environment: Social and Legal Perspectives, Aldershot: Ashgate, £37.50 hb. T. Hayward (1998) Political Theory and Ecological Values, Cambridge: Polity Press, £14.99.

Political Studies, 2012

Territorial self-determination and global distributive justice seem to be at loggerheads. Cosmopolitans hold that institutions such as states can be justified only derivatively on global justice. But “self-determinists” insist that territorial self-determination is independently significant. The current paper hypothesizes that the core disagreement is not over the justification of global resource egalitarianism, but rather over the conception of resources per se. The paper presents three conceptions of resources – the familiar “natural resources” conception, Tim Hayward’s “physical” conception, and Ronald Dworkin’s “constructivist” conception, – and argues that, particularly when appended to egalitarian global distribution principles, each is importantly flawed. The paper then presents and defends an “intentional” conception of resources as fungible means. This account treats resources as intentional kinds rather than natural kinds. As such, they can be identified only after discerning whose intentional states are decisive in a given case. Discerning that is the role of a theory of territorial rights. A resource is such when the morally legitimate territorial right-holder treats it as a fungible means. The theory of territorial rights is universal, and the resource distribution principle is morally cosmopolitan; but the determination of what counts as a resource is claimant-relative, respecting self-determination. The paper then works out implications for global justice, with special attention to the global environment and through comparisons with Hayward’s ecospace egalitarianism. The result is a sketch of a unified theory of global resource justice, giving due weight to both cosmopolitan egalitarianism and to territorial self-determination.

Advances in International Environmental Politics

BOOK REVIEW

Journal of Moral Philosophy, 2019

Chris Armstrong provides, in his excellent book, a systematic account of natural resource justice. His comprehensive account contributes towards answering questions regarding who should control, have access to and derive benefits from resources, and which proposals for reform will take us closer to an ideal of resource justice. Armstrong begins by specifying eight core resource rights. These are the rights of access, withdrawal, alienation, exclusion, and management; and the rights to derive income, to regulate alienation, and to regulate income. He argues that it is not necessary to fit all these different rights into a single notion of ownership, a fact which allows him to proceed without committing to a global regime, where resources are wholly owned by any one or kind of entity. Armstrong then develops his account of global resource justice. He rejects the idea that a global egalitarian account should promote equal shares of resources, and challenges left-libertarians by arguing that resources are neither the correct thing to equalize nor the right thing to distribute for justice. He suggests that two arguments render the equal shares position vulnerable. First, strictly equal shares are unappealing given people's different capacities to convert resources into what matters morally: wellbeing (p. 63). Second, inequalities in resource holdings are not the only inequalities which should concern egalitarians, so insisting on equal shares of resources in particular is unjustified (p. 64). Insofar as left-libertarians hold that individuals must be compensated only for inequalities they are not responsible for, they should be able to show why other types of inequalities we face upon birth (differences in inherited wealth, unequal earning power etc.) and for which we are no more responsible should not matter just as much. The correct account of resource justice, Armstrong contends, is to promote equalizing shares of the wide categories of benefits and burdens flowing from resources, in the absence of any overriding special claims, in a way that promotes greater equality in human wellbeing. After defending this welfarist global egalitarianism, Armstrong turns to the legal doctrine of "permanent sovereignty", which vests states with extensive and exclusive rights over the resources in their territory. He finds every available justification of this doctrine ultimately unconvincing. One justification claims that states have improvement-based special claims over the resources located in their territory, because of the economic value they have added to these resources. Armstrong's response is that even if such claims could be defended, they would apply only to some resources-and that they would be best addressed by granting only a limited right to income (p. 100).

Exclusive authority over natural resources is one of the most prized rights attached to sovereignty, according to current international law. It implies a set of powers, prerogatives, and immunities the most consequential of which is the right to legislate and adjudicate property rights over natural resources, including nationalization of foreign property, permission/power to decide on terms of foreign investment or extraction contracts, and control of the sales of natural resources. Allocated to states and their people in the process of decolonisation and the postwar transformation of international law, the sovereign right to natural resources was meant to correct – and indeed corrected – the injustice of colonial dispossession of natural resources. Simultaneously, it was meant to secure economic benefits arising from the exploitation of natural resources for the people of developing and newly independent states. The principle that states have an exclusive right to use natural resources occurring on their territories so that they can fully realize the right to self-determination and provide well-being and development to their people lies at the foundation of the new system of the distribution of rights to natural resources. 1 Yet many countries have failed to use their natural endowments for national development and the well-being of the people. Often, natural resources have been used for the private benefits of ruling elites and oligarchs, to sustain repression, authoritarianism, military rule, and even to wage an unjust war (Ross 2004). In current conditions of growing scarcity and high demand – and hence very high economic value of many natural resources – , the right over natural resources can easily be turned into an ability to accumulate private wealth and sustain unjust rule. The case of Equatorial Guinea described by Leif Wenar has become notorious: its president Teodoro Obiang, who came to power unconstitutionally, is continuously capable of selling the country's oil and using the revenues to sustain absolute repression of his people, and the lavish lifestyle of his family. And yet, millions of gallons of Equatorial Guinea's oil keep arriving in the United States and other countries with unquestioned legal title to these resources – a title which is anchored in the fact of Obiang's sheer might and violent coercion. In this and many similar cases, the recognition of the right to natural resources seems to follow the old rule of international law – the so called principle of " effectiveness " – according to which an entity is recognized as a sovereign state and hence entitled to all the powers, rights, privileges, and immunities ascribed to states by international law if it has an effective control over the population and the territory. The principle of effectiveness, however, is no longer a valid principle (Buchanan 2004, 6). According to current international law, the capacity to sustain control over a population and a territory by means of military force and repression is not considered as the adequate basis for the recognition of this political entity's exercise of power as internationally legitimate. Today, no state is internationally recognized as legitimate which came into being through aggressive war and violation of territorial integrity. No foreign occupation can deprive peoples of their right to self-determination and sovereignty. No government can be recognized as legitimate if it institutionalizes apartheid or engages in ethnic cleansing and genocide (Cassese 2011, 12-13).

2000