Global Justice and Natural Resource Taxation

Abstract

Proposals for resource taxes and associated transfers have played a very prominent role in contemporary debates about global justice, from Beitz’s ‘resource redistribution principle,’ to Steiner’s Global Fund, to Pogge’s Global Resources Dividend. But such proposals have also attracted some important criticisms, including the claim that resource taxes are unmotivated, or that their impact would be regressive. This paper responds to these challenges, and at the same time it seeks to clarify the role resource taxes should play in an egalitarian project. Still, when we evaluate their potential impact much may turn out to hang on just which resources should be taxed, and which of the ways in which we engage with resources – owning them, extracting them, or consuming them – should render us liable to paying taxes. I will have rather less to say in response to this question, but I shall suggest that in light of the diverse goals which resource taxes are likely to be charged with advancing, a single undifferentiated global tax on natural resources (undifferentiated, that is, either in the sense that it targets all resources, or in the sense that it is exclusively targeted at for instance ownership or consumption) is unlikely to promote justice most effectively. On the assumption that a more fine-grained approach may be desirable, the paper ends with a discussion of several proposals for specific resource taxes.