Discussions of the demandingness of global egalitarianism, when it comes to natural resources, are haunted by some peculiar spectres. One vision sees mysterious agencies parachuting into communities in order to appropriate resources in the interests of global redistribution. Another sees communities committed to the integrity of their land, or to traditional patterns of resource use or ownership, being compelled to extract resources in the interests of global justice (or, which is almost as bad, being forced to pay taxes when they do not wish to extract them). In order to avoid these terrifying spectres, many minds are occupied in finding a rapprochement between self-determination and global egalitarianism, perhaps dividing different categories of resource rights between global and local actors, for example.
I have no quarrel with the goal of those efforts – I assume that some division of resource rights across a variety of layers of governance is desirable on a number of grounds - but the spectres which often animate those discussions in the first place are worth exorcising if that allows us to be clearer about what global egalitarianism really demands by way of resource justice (and hence what a proper rapprochement would consist in). The paper presents four reasons why the best version(s) of global egalitarianisms will not, or not often, have the dreaded implications mentioned above. Examining these reasons (concerning the geographical spread of resources across the world; the desirability of integrationism about egalitarian justice; the demands of intergenerational justice; and the relationship between equality and efficiency) helps us to get clearer about the demands of global egalitarianism, and it helps us begin our discussion of the tension, if any, between global egalitarianism and self-determination from a more secure starting-point.
