It is a standard assumption of international law and a largely unquestioned fact in political philosophy that nation-states hold full sovereignty over their natural resources – a sovereignty that includes both jurisdictional powers and ownership rights over them. While state advocates claim that countries ought to get the full benefits generated by these resources (which is actually what happens in the world today), cosmopolitans have questioned this position and have proposed that these benefits be totally or at least partially shared. No one, however, has taken notice of this curious asymmetry: that when it comes to the costs generated by natural resources (for example, by a volcanic eruption), each country affected is supposed to clean up the mess. In other words, no one expects the owner/controller of the natural resource in question to compensate those affected beyond its borders, even though the cause of their troubles lies within the former's jurisdiction. I call this the 'Volcanic Asymmetry' and, in this article, I present four arguments on its behalf and show why they fail. I then sketch two alternatives to eliminate it, and suggest that this asymmetry reveals at bottom two things: on the one hand, the insufficiency of statist theories when it comes to justifying the current doctrine of full sovereignty of States over natural resources, and consequently the global territorial framework as a whole; and, on the other hand, the challenging practical difficulties encountered by cosmopolitans if the benefits and burdens of natural resources were to be distributed across the board. To conclude, I sketch an intermediate path that would probably prove fairer than the current state of affairs without being too utopian to achieve.
