What Is a Just Distribution of Natural Resources? A Lockean Answer

What is a just global distribution of natural resources? This arguably timeless question is currently experiencing a renaissance. Part of the reason is the interesting recent developments in the theory of territorial rights. Among the set of such rights, states normally claim full ownership over the natural resources found within their territory. How, if at all, can such claims be justified? In this paper I give a Lockean answer: a just distribution of natural resource rights is determined by how such resources are incorporated into people’s life plans. This theory has some similarities to Chris Armstrong’s recent work on natural resources. Armstrong, himself an egalitarian, argues that global egalitarians ought to recognize at least some plan-based claims to control particular natural resources. Global egalitarians have normally been suspicious of such claims, Armstrong notes, because their satisfaction typically requires granting the claimants a larger than equal share of natural resources (and the benefits flowing from them). However, Armstrong argues, in cases where that inequality can be offset by offering such claimants less than equal shares of other goods relevant for justice, egalitarians can and should accommodate plan-based claims. While I agree with elements of Armstrong’s approach, I shall argue that his account gives a too small role to life plans: life plans can and do ground natural resource rights in a much broader range of cases than what he envisages. In fact, as I shall claim, a consideration from life plans is the fundamental ground for such rights. If I am correct, Armstrong’s egalitarian theory of natural resources misrepresents the role played by people’s life plans in global (egalitarian) justice. Granting plan-based claims to resources is not in tension with egalitarian aims. To the contrary, their satisfaction is what a just global (egalitarian) distribution of natural resources requires.