The Natural Resource Question: An Exploration of Rights to Natural Resources

This research project is concerned with "who" has "what" rights over the world's natural resources. We may distinguish three constitutive components: first, an account of who has rights over natural resources, second, an account of the particular kinds of rights they have, and third, a justification of the two earlier components. I refer to the substance of my enquiry as the Natural Resource Question. I provisionally formulate this as:

Who has what kinds of rights over the world's natural resources, and why?

Modern resource rights are characterised by a statist approach: the United Nations (1962) recognises the 'inalienable right of all states to freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources [...].' However, consider the first italicised passage: should natural resources belong to the state understood as a governing body, or to citizens understood as a political community, or to determinate groups such as indigenous peoples like the Iroquois or Sioux - or, even, to individuals? There are further possibilities: humanity may have a right to the earth's natural resources, and we may even suggest that future people have rights to natural resources. Consider now the second italicised passage: we may suggest that whilst a state is morally justified in claiming possession of a set of resources, it may not have a right to use them however it wishes; or that whilst it may use the resources, it may not have a right to 100% of the benefits. Alternatively, we may maintain that whilst a state has no right of possession over natural resources, it may have a right to use these resources - according to need, for instance. The complexity and potential of the Natural Resource Question is thus evident.

Further enquiry into natural resource justice is warranted and necessary. First, natural resource justice is of great practical relevance. Debates over such rights have severe implications, and the theorisation of a normative answer to such questions can aid in solving some of our most pressing issues. Natural resources have indeed significantly fuelled transborder conflict: United Nations Peacekeeping (no date) reports that, in the last 60 years, '40% of all interstate conflict have [had] a link to natural resources.' The contentious significance of natural resources is further evidenced by the tension stemming from the current energy crisis affecting Europe and other regions (Luca Volante, 2022). Debates over climate change additionally illustrate the significance of the Natural Resource Question: with processes such as decarbonisation requiring intense extraction of minerals (Arrobas et al., 2017), the question of who has the right to decide what is to be done with such resources is as salient as ever.

Second, this project aims to fill an important gap in the literature. Many works examining who has rights over natural resources have sought to derive them from a theory of territorial rights - such as in Moore (2015) and Stilz (2019). Alternatively, others have derived them from international law and an analysis of the harmful effects of the current international system - such as in Wenar (2018). Neither approach, however, adopts a sufficiently comprehensive analysis. This project seeks to develop an alternative, in a comprehensive theoretical enquiry which is constitutive rather than derivative as to the role of natural resources to the same.

Third, this approach to addressing natural resources recognises the need to include competing considerations - such as the claims of indigenous people, the demands of global justice, and responsibilities to future generations. Dissatisfied with prevalent traditions in literature, which either over-emphasise or undervalue the significance of land and the moral arbitrariness of resources, this project seeks to make a novel contribution, specifically exploring the potential of Cosmopolitanism.