Justice, Territory and Natural Resources

Abstract

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 article hypothesizes that the core disagreement is not over the justification of global resource egalitarianism, but rather over the conception of resources per se. The article 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 article 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 article then works out implications for global justice, with special attention to the global environment and through comparisons with Hayward's eco-space 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.