(PDF) Natural Resource Ownership

Natural Resource Ownership

Chris Armstrong

For Hugh LaFollette (ed) International Encyclopedia of Ethics

The category of natural resources is commonly taken to comprise anything - whether matter

or energy – which is potentially useful to human beings, but which was not created by human

beings. All of us require some land to stand upon, air to breathe, and water to drink, and in

that sense natural resources are key to human survival. Moreover - though doing so is not

always easy - individuals or communities lucky enough to command larger than average

supplies of valuable resources such as oil or gold may manage to convert their good fortune

into great wealth. Because the ownership of natural resources can be so consequential for

peoples’ wellbeing, philosophers have argued for centuries about just how the pattern of

resource ownership ought, morally speaking, to be constrained. This essay aims to provide an

overview of debates about the justice or injustice of patterns of resource ownership. First, we

consider ongoing debates about the circumstances in which individual agents can come to be

the owners of the world’s natural resources. Second, we consider the way in which arguments

about natural resource ownership have come to play an important role in more recent debates

about the territorial rights of states.

Justice and Resource Ownership

Since natural resources are not created by any of us, it has often been argued that no-one has

any greater initial claim to their ownership or use than anyone else (see e.g. Risse 2012).

Unlike the artefacts we create through our own labour, natural resources do not come into the

world already ‘attached’ to particular people, so to speak. Among seventeenth-century

1

philosophers such as Hobbes, Locke, or Grotius, it was a commonplace that natural resources

were created for the enjoyment of humankind but not for the enjoyment of any particular

person. In recognition of that fact, some constraint would need to be placed on how many of

the world’s resources any one person could convert into their own personal property. That

constraint would operate as a moral and perhaps legal ‘proviso’ on the appropriation of the

world’s natural resources.

Such a thought has continued to resonate in recent debates within political philosophy. To

contemporary left-libertarians, for instance, the world’s natural resources represent (at least in

their bare, unimproved state) a distinctive currency for egalitarian justice (see JUSTICE,

EGALITARIANISM). Although people do have strong individual claims over the social

products they create for themselves, natural resources are the only objects in the world to

which no-one has any special claim, and the only objects which might need to be

redistributed if their ownership became unduly skewed. Questions about natural resource

ownership also play a central role within contemporary debates about the nature and

justification of territorial rights (see below) and within debates about climate justice (where

scholars ask, for instance: who should be taken to own the absorptive capacity of carbon

sinks such as the world’s forests, or its oceans?) (see CLIMATE CHANGE).

One of the most famous and influential discussions of natural resource ownership appeared in

John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government of 1689 (see LOCKE, JOHN). In that essay

Locke presented an argument for the permissibility – and indeed the usefulness – of private

ownership over the world’s resources. When individual appropriators make particular

resources into their own property, then – at least in the case of rivalrous goods - they thereby

deprive others of the ability to become owners of the same objects. Nevertheless

appropriation can be beneficial even for the excluded, if giving appropriators an interest in

the improvement of the world’s resources acts as a stimulus to useful economic activity. No-

one in particular has an interest in expending time or money in improving or conserving

resources which are held in common – for the rewards would then be reaped by all.

Individual owners, by contrast, would have an interest in improvement, since they would reap

the benefits alone. For this reason, a system of private property in resources is superior to

alternatives such as joint ownership – in which we all have a stake in the world’s resources,

and individual acts of appropriation, if permitted, must be sanctioned by all – or non-

ownership – in which the world’s resources remain available to all, but appropriable by none.

2

Even if a regime of private property in at least some resources is justified, however, three

questions remain to be answered. A first question is how particular external assets can come

to be appropriated. In order to make objects our property must we improve or otherwise alter

them? Or it is enough to factor control over those objects into our personal projects, for

instance? Locke’s answer to that question – that since we own our own labour, we must also

own any objects we ‘mix’ our labour with – has been widely criticised. But there must be

some agreed means by which agents are permitted to stake claims over this or that resource.

A second question is which property rights an act of appropriation justifies. Scholars have

often assumed that acts of appropriation get us something akin to ‘full liberal ownership’

(Honoré 1987). But conceivably, they might justify some set of property rights short of full

ownership (Armstrong 2015). A third question is within which moral limits we are to be

permitted to appropriate the world’s resources. It cannot be the case, at least on most

philosophical views, that individual acts of appropriation are to be morally unconstrained. If

no proviso on appropriation were applied, in principle we could end up with a scenario in

which one person owned the entire world of external objects, leaving others unable to

improve or interact with those objects without the owner’s express permission. The owner in

question could then name his or her price for access to the world’s resources – including

resources which are, as we have noted, essential to human survival.

But if appropriation is to be somehow limited, what are the appropriate limits? The so-called

‘Lockean proviso’ suggests that appropriation is permissible for so long as ‘enough and as

good’ resources remain available for others to appropriate themselves. Whether Locke in fact

intended this famous proviso to act as a substantial constraint on appropriation remains

controversial (Waldron 1979). So too do its practical implications if so. On one view, the

proviso is so ambiguous as to be devoid of any determinate implications at all (Fried 2004:

84). Either way, it has certainly been taken as the point of inspiration by philosophers seeking

to defend quite different normative conclusions.

Robert Nozick’s argument in Anarchy, State and Utopia (Nozick 1974) is one well-known

example. The account Nozick defends is a ‘libertarian’ one (see LIBERTARIANISM).

Libertarians treat property rights as morally basic, not least insofar as they serve to protect

individual liberty. Notably, libertarians emphasise the moral significance of ‘self-ownership’

– an idea which picks out the fundamental property rights we each have in our own persons.

Right-libertarians believe, moreover, that our individual appropriation of external resources

should be relatively unconstrained. Like Locke, Nozick emphasised the socio-economic

3

benefits of a regime in which private appropriation, compared to alternatives in which natural

resources are, for instance, held in common. If a system of private property leaves no-one

worse off than they would be under a scenario in which there was no private property in

natural resources then, Nozick claimed, there could be no objection to its introduction. Given

the familiar economic advantages of the free market, he suggested, this proviso is unlikely to

be violated in practice (1974: 182). Nozick’s ‘proviso’ has been the subject of considerable

critical discussion. Even if the introduction of a regime of private property in resources does

not make me materially worse off, for example, the transition to a world in which most

resource are owned by a few might represent a serious loss to my autonomy (Cohen 1995,

Otsuka 2003). It may be a necessary part of the justification of a regime of private property to

show that it leaves everyone at least as well off as they were under the system it replaced (i.e.,

a system of joint or common ownership). But a whole variety of regimes of private property

are conceivable, including regimes in which inequalities are limited through taxation, say. For

a particular regime of private property to be fully justified, it might be thought relevant to

ask whether it performs better than all alternative systems in advancing the interests of those

subjected to it, and not merely whether it performs better than a system in which private

ownership is forbidden. If there are alternative – or accessible alternative – regimes which

perform still better when it comes to advancing peoples’ wellbeing, it is not obvious why we

should not choose them instead.

Note that some right-libertarians favour an even more permissive position on appropriation

than did Nozick. In fact, some appear to believe that justice places no constraint upon private

appropriation whatsoever; there would indeed be no objection, from the point of view of

justice, if one person appropriated all of the world’s resources. It is rather difficult to see,

however, how such a situation would promote the value of individual liberty which is

supposed to be the lodestone of libertarian views. If one person is allowed to own the entirety

of the world’s resources, then our self-ownership is compatible, somewhat paradoxically,

‘with its being the case that some persons have no right to breathe the air they need to live or

to stand on any place on Earth…or even to occupy with their bodies the physical space that

their bodies must occupy’ (Arneson 2010: 172). Those who do own the land, or the air, could

name their own conditions for allowing us to do so. So much for our liberty if so.

An would be to stipulate some kind of basic floor principle. For instance, we might forbid

appropriation of resources whenever that appropriation leaves others unable to meet their

basic rights. Such a constraint could be defended as part of a ‘moderate’ version of

4

libertarianism (Wendt 2017), though it is unlikely to be attractive to right-libertarians who

doubt that we possess any duty, whether positive or negative, to ensure that others’ basic

needs are provided for. Why might a basic rights constraint nevertheless be attractive to some

libertarians? One argument might be that, if the justification for defending a strong right to

private property is that it allows individuals to securely pursue personal projects, then it

would be counter-intuitive to tolerate a situation in which some people, simply because they

lacked access even to the most modest shares of resources, were unable to pursue any

projects at all. A regime of private property justified on such a basis must allow all

individuals to actually live as project-pursuers (Wendt 2017). This would require, at the very

least, that basic rights to food, shelter and housing should be secure.

But a basic rights proviso has appeal beyond libertarianism, where it intersects with

sufficientarian views on justice. For instance, it has also been defended within recent (non-

libertarian) accounts of global justice. On Mathias Risse’s theory, for instance, a country’s

right to exclude outsiders from accessing domestic natural resources is undermined when

those outsiders are otherwise unable to meet their basic rights with the resources available to

them (Risse 2012). This is because Risse defends a version of common ownership of the

world’s resources in which we retain at all times the right to use the world’s resources to

support our own survival. Even if states with plentiful resources are generally justified in

turning away potential immigrants, they are not justified in doing so, therefore, if the

consequence will be that those would-be immigrants perish through a lack of resources. But a

basic rights constraint could of course have implications beyond qualifying a state’s right to

exclude outsiders. Even within the borders of a community, individuals might be justified in

taking natural resources from their erstwhile owners if their basic rights were at stake.

Contemporary defenders of the very old idea of a ‘right of necessity’ believe that the claims

of the deprived can trump the prerogatives of owners in these circumstances (Mancilla 2016).

Thomas Pogge has developed another argument connecting resource ownership with the

fulfilment of basic rights. On this view, resource extraction by the advantaged is unjust if it

occurs in the face of severe poverty elsewhere (see WORLD POVERTY). This is because we

are all co-owners of the world’s resources in at least some minimal sense. All must benefit at

least to some small extent, therefore, from their appropriation and use. Individuals or

companies ought to be required to pay a minimal tax – a Global Resource Dividend – aimed

at combating severe poverty whenever they extract resources. The proceeds would be

5

enough, on Pogge’s calculations, to eradicate severe poverty worldwide (Pogge 2002; for

objections, see Haubrich 2004, and Hayward 2005).

More demanding still than either right-libertarian or basic rights constraints would be some

form of egalitarian constraint on appropriation. So-called ‘left-libertarians’ defend a right to

self-ownership but couple that right with a defence of equal individual ownership of the

world’s natural resources. Our equal stake in the world’s resources might be unpacked in

various ways. We might forbid people from appropriating beyond such a point where their

opportunity for welfare outstripped that available to others (Otsuka 2003, Vallentyne 2012).

Or we might stipulate that all of the world’s individuals are entitled to appropriate an equal

per capita share by market value of the world’s resources (Steiner 1994). In either case, to

appropriate more than an equal share would constitute a violation of others’ rights to the

fruits of the earth. Hillel Steiner argues when some appropriate a greater than equal share of

the world’s resources, they must in consequence compensate others by paying a tax on their

surplus appropriation - with the tax reflecting the full market value of the surplus (see

TAXATION). The revenues from such a tax would suffice for the creation of a Global Fund,

and the proceeds could then fund a universal basic income (see BASIC INCOME) or a basic

capital grant for all. Such ideas resonate with the arguments of Thomas Paine in the

eighteenth century. Paine argued that a tax levied on the unimproved value of land should be

used to fund a form of basic income (Paine 1987).

There are also well-known arguments for egalitarian constraints upon natural resource

ownership which arise from outside of the libertarian tradition. Within debates on global

justice (see GLOBAL DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE), one influential argument suggested that

the distribution of the world’s resource across countries is mere happenstance from the point

of view of those countries. Cases of conquest aside, no country, after all, can claim to be

responsible for the fact that it controls more rather than less crude oil, or more rather than less

gold or iron ore. Nevertheless, the haphazard distribution of resources appears to leave some

countries advantaged with respect to economic development, and others disadvantaged. To

ensure that all countries possessed the ability to achieve effective institutions and fulfil the

rights of their members, a global resource tax might be required (Beitz 1979; see also Barry

1989).

On both this view and the left-libertarian one, natural resources are distinctive insofar as we

have no special claims over them in their original or unimproved state – as may not be the

6

case with other goods. More recent egalitarian views have questioned, however, whether

natural resources are genuinely distinctive in this respect, given that there may be many other

goods over which we turn out to have no sound special claims. For instance, we appear to

stand in the same relationship with social or cultural capital built up by our ancestors as we

do to natural resources: these assets are immensely valuable, and can impact significantly

upon our life-chances, but no-one living can claim to have had a hand in creating them. If the

parallel holds, natural resources ought to be treated in much the same manner as other sources

of advantage and disadvantage (Armstrong 2017).

That claim might turn out to be important, since arguments for the egalitarian redistribution

of resource value alone stands prey to a significant objection. Contrary to Beitz’s assumption,

shares in natural resources often turn out to correlate quite poorly with overall levels of

wealth or indeed advantage more broadly construed. In fact, as political economists have

repeatedly observed, countries with deficits in social or economic capital, or weak political

institutions, not only frequently fail to convert natural resource wealth into economic growth,

but are often plagued by political conflict and cycles of poor governance. A consequence of

this is that plans to redistribute wealth from countries which are natural resource-rich to

countries which are resource poor would see funds flowing from some of the poorest

countries in the world to some of the wealthiest. From an egalitarian point of view this would

be a highly regressive move. One way of avoiding that unfortunate implication would be to

argue that we ought to allocate funds to countries which were disadvantaged overall, and not

only to those which happen to have relatively meagre shares of natural resources. Another

would be to argue that any global taxes should be raised not on the basis of a community’s

natural resource wealth considered in isolation, but on the basis of some broader index of

advantage. Taxes on natural resources in particular can sometimes have welcome effects, but

are best seen as part of a broader package of measures intended to achieve global justice

(Armstrong 2017). Moreover, if countries (and especially countries with weak institutions)

are often ‘cursed,’ rather than blessed, by significant resource endowments, we have reason to

investigate parallel measures – such as proposals for greater transparency in the resource

trade – which display promise in subverting the curse and hence ensuring that resource

wealth works for the benefit of ordinary citizens.

7

Resource Ownership and State Sovereignty

For the most part, the discussion of natural resource ownership in large part inspired by

Locke has sought to establish the moral limits to individual appropriation. But when we pull

our focus up to the global level, we will immediately observe that decisions about resource

ownership – for instance, whether there is to be a regime of common ownership, private

ownership, or some mixture of both – are made for the most part by individual states. Under

the international legal doctrine of ‘permanent sovereignty,’ natural resources are held to be

both the property, and subject to the jurisdiction, of the particular nation-states in which they

occur. These resource rights are often taken to be one of the core elements of a state’s

territorial rights - alongside the right to control borders, and the right to exercise jurisdiction

within a particular territory (Miller 2012).

But as Beitz (1979) pointed out, this doctrine can have major distributive implications,

vesting countries with widely divergent shares of resource wealth. What, if anything, might

justify the assumption that states ought to hold these rights over domestic natural resources?

After all, we can imagine a scenario in which states exercised core functions without

possessing exclusive ownership of, or jurisdiction over, local natural resources. This is a topic

to which philosophers have until recently devoted surprisingly little attention (Simmons

2016: 148). In recent years, however, there has been a substantial reawakening of interest in

the normative basis and content of states’ territorial rights. Within the emergent literature on

territorial rights (see TERRITORIAL RIGHTS), the claims of states to enjoy ownership over

domestic resources has now become a topic of lively debate.

An apparently simple solution to the puzzle of why states ought to enjoy rights over domestic

natural resources would be to argue that the territorial rights of states – at least those

territorial rights which are ostensibly property-like in nature - are simply an aggregation of

the property rights of individuals who have consented to join those communities. On an

individualist Lockean theory, for example, individuals with property holdings might form

communities with people adjacent to them, and over time large communities could result –

communities which would have rights over the whole territory comprised of the individual

8

property-holdings of members. If those individuals happened to be the rightful owners of

local resources, the state might then come legitimately to exercise rights over all of those

resources. Though it is a simple and elegant theory, critics have doubted whether such an

account is capable of justifying anything like the contemporary pattern of state territorial

rights. One problem is the issue of ‘holes.’ It is perfectly possible that, whilst most people in

an area will consent to join a particular community, some dissenters will not. The resulting

territory might then have gaps; and those who live in those gaps might find their freedom of

movement severely restricted. Second, there are questions about how robustly territorial

rights might persist if they are generated by individual labouring. On Simmons’s view, the

land in question must be actively lived and laboured on if property rights are to persist

(Simmons 2016: 116). But this too could have the implication that potentially large tracts of a

community’s territory could cease to be their property over time. More importantly, perhaps –

and this is either a problem of the theory, or an attractive feature, depending on your view – it

is worth noting that this theory does not in fact appear to support the generation of property

rights on the part of the state or society. Rather, individual citizens remain the owners rather

the community as a whole (Simmons 2016: 118). As such, it is not obvious why individual

property-owners should be prevented from ceasing to be members of the community if they

so choose, and (metaphorically, rather than literally) taking their property with them if so

(Steiner 1996). The consensus, then, is that the individual voluntarist account of

contemporary Lockeans is highly unlikely to justify anything approaching the robust

territorial rights enjoyed by contemporary states. Some defenders of the theory, of course,

might be happy with that conclusion, arguing that the sweeping resource rights claimed by

states under international law cannot be justified (Simmons 2016).

An alternative approach would maintain that states ought to be the bearers of substantial

resource rights because holding those rights is necessary for their performance of valuable

social and political functions. A variety of relevant functions have been suggested. For

instance, it might be that resource rights are required in order that local communities can

exercise discretion over how resources are to be used and regulated, given that decisions here

could have a significant impact on the quality of the local environment; or it might be that

states require resource rights in order to be in a position to enforce justice and to meet the

basic needs of their citizens; or it might be that resource rights are simply a necessary

9

component of states’ self-determination (for related arguments, see for instance Stilz 2011,

Nine 2012, Moore 2015).

According to critics, however, such arguments have limited potential to justify states’

resource rights. First, each of these functions might be performed with a set of rights

somewhat short of the full complement of rights assured by the practice of permanent

sovereignty. Second, these arguments might provide reasons why states ought to enjoy

jurisdictional rights to govern resource use within a territory; but it is less clear why they

demand that states, or even their citizens, must be the owners of (all of) those resources, as

opposed to some subset of local resources. Third, environmental integrity, basic rights or self-

determination might each be most effectively secured if we share resource rights across state

borders at least to some degree, rather than vesting them exclusively with individual states

(Armstrong 2017). And fourth, even if these functionalist arguments did provide plausible

grounds for states’ ownership of some natural resources, it is not always obvious that they

provide an argument for ownership of the particular resources which happen to fall within

their borders (Simmons 2016: 96). These problems suggest that the functionalist argument

will also struggle to justify resource rights anything like as extensive as those currently

reserved for them under international law.

A distinct set of arguments seeks to ground resource rights not in the functions that states

perform, but in the relationship between national communities and local natural resources.

Two kinds of relationship might be thought important here. On the one hand, national

communities might have laboured over local resources and in so doing improved them. If so,

describing those improved resources as in some sense available for global redistribution is to

do a disservice to the claims of locals (Miller 2012). On the other hand, it might be that

national communities have become attached to local resources, for instance in the sense that

their identities as communities are rooted in a specific mode of interaction with those

resources (Miller 2012). If so, to wrest resources from the control of local communities might

leave them alienated from their environments, or struggling to understand themselves as the

same communities. In response to nationalist arguments, critics have suggested that both

improvement and attachment are likely to have an uneven range, suggesting a close link

between national communities and some resources but not others. Although special claims

10

from improvement and attachment might have moral force, they will not suffice to justify the

current regime of thoroughgoing resource rights claimed by nation-states (Armstrong 2015).

This brief survey of recent debates has only sketched the complex theoretical issues at stake.

A number of important issues remain to be resolved, and I will close by commenting briefly

on two of them. First, even if permanent sovereignty over natural resources (or something

like it) can be vindicated, an important question remains concerning the agent of sovereign

rights over resources. Should states be seen to hold resource rights in their own right? Or are

they merely the agents of ‘the people,’ who reserve the right to make decisions about resource

use? On some accounts, citizens are morally entitled to exercise a kind of popular sovereignty

over domestic resources. But if ‘popular resource sovereignty’ is to become a reality, it will

demand greater public involvement in decisions about resource use, and the sale of resources,

than has often been the case in practice. This in turn might have important implications for

practices such as international trade. For if it is the people, as opposed to their governments,

who are the ultimate owners of natural resources, it surely cannot be legitimate for

unaccountable rulers to sell those resources and to keep the proceeds for themselves. Perhaps

then, in deference to popular resource sovereignty, outsiders ought to cease purchasing

natural resources from countries where minimal standards of ‘public accountability’ are not

met, such that citizens are aware of sales, and able to object to them without suffering severe

costs (Wenar 2016). An embargo on buying resources from dictators might encourage greater

accountability in general, and encourage the more equitable sharing of resource revenues.

Recent proposals for greater transparency in the resource trade might make further progress

in this direction.

A second important question concerns the external scope, if any, of states’ claims to natural

resources. We have seen that states’ rights to the resources inside their own borders are

contested. But how should we think about the many valuable natural resources which fall

outside of the borders of any state? In this category we could include the atmosphere, the fish

of the high seas, the mineral resources found in or on the seabed, or the petrochemical wealth

or biodiversity to be found in the Polar regions. Here, the story which connects resource

rights to the functions of the state does not appear to apply. Should individual agents be

permitted to appropriate these resources, and if so, under what constraints? Should they be

brought under the control of individual states – as has happened with the resources of

11

Exclusive Economic Zones adjacent to states’ coastlines? Or should they be considered the

common property of all of humankind, with any benefits from their exploitation being shared

more broadly? Contemporary philosophical debates on these issues are still at an early stage

(see e.g. Nine 2013, Moore 2015, Armstrong 2017). But it does appear that the standard

justifications for the territorial rights of states appear ill-suited to justifying state rights over

these external resources (Simmons 2016, Armstrong 2017).

Cross-references

BASIC INCOME; CLIMATE CHANGE; EGALITARIANISM; GLOBAL DISTRIBUTIVE

JUSTICE; JUSTICE; LIBERTARIANISM; LOCKE, JOHN; TAXATION; TERRITORIAL

RIGHTS; WORLD POVERTY

REFERENCES

Armstrong, Chris 2015. “Against Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources,” Politics,

Philosophy and Economics Vol 14, pp. 129-51.

Armstrong, Chris 2017. Justice and Natural Resources: An Egalitarian Theory. Oxford:

Oxford University Press.

Arneson, Richard 2010. “Self-Ownership and World-Ownership: Against Left-

Libertarianism,” Social Philosophy and Policy Vol 27, pp. 168-94.

Barry, Brian 1989. “Humanity and Justice in Global Perspective,” in Democracy, Justice and

Power: Essays in Political Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 434-62.

Beitz, Charles 1979. Political Theory and International Relations. Princeton: Princeton

University Press.

Cohen, G. A. 1995. Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Fried, Barbara 2004. “Left-Libertarianism: A Review Essay,” Philosophy and Public Affairs

Vol 32, pp. 66-92.

12

Haubrich, Dirk 2004. “Global Distributive Justice and the Taxation of Natural Resources—

Who Should Pick Up the Tab?” Contemporary Political Theory 3.1 (2004): 48-69.

Hayward, Tim 2005. “Thomas Pogge’s Global Resources Dividend: A Critique and an

Alternative,” Journal of Moral Philosophy 2.3 (2005): 317-332.

Tony Honoré. 1987. ‘Ownership,’ in his Making Law Bind. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp.

161-92.

Locke, John 1960 (1690). “Second Treatise,” in P. Laslett (ed) Locke: Two Treatises on

Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 265-428.

Mancilla, Alejandra 2016. The Right of Necessity: Moral Cosmopolitanism and Global

Poverty. Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Miller, David 2012. “Territorial Rights: Concept and Justification,” Political Studies Vol 60,

pp 252-68.

Moore, Margaret 2015. A Political Theory of Territory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nine, Cara 2012. Global Justice and Territory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nine, Cara 2013. “Territory in a World of Limits: Exploring Claims to Oil and Ice,” in L.

Leonard (ed) Environmental Philosophy. Bradford: Emerald Group Publishing,

pp.137 – 155.

Nozick, Robert 1974. Anarchy, State and Utopia. Oxford: Blackwell.

Otsuka, Michael 2003. Libertarianism Without Inequality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Paine, Thomas 1987. “Agrarian Justice,” in M. Foot and I. Kranmnick (eds) The Thomas

Paine Reader. London: Penguin, pp. 471-489.

Pogge, Thomas 2002. World Poverty and Human Rights. Cambridge: Polity.

Risse, Mathias 2012. On Global Justice. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Simmons, A. John 2016. Boundaries of Authority. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Steiner, Hillel 1994. An Essay on Rights. Oxford: Blackwell.

Steiner, Hillel 1996. “Territorial Justice,” in S. Caney, D. George and P. Jones (eds) National

Rights, International Obligations. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, pp. 139-68.

13

Stilz, Anna 2011. “Nations, States and Territory,” Ethics Vol 121, pp. 572-601.

Vallentyne, Peter 2012. “Left-Libertarianism,” in D. Estlund (ed) Oxford Handbook of

Political Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 152-68.

Waldron, Jeremy 1979. “Enough and as Good Left for Others,” Philosophical Quarterly Vol

29, pp. 319-28.

Wenar, Leif 2016. Blood Oil. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wendt, Fabian 2017. “The Sufficiency Proviso: A Case for Moderate Libertarianism,” in J.

Brennan, B. van der Vossen and D. Schmidtz (eds) The Routledge Handbook of

Libertarianism. London: Routledge, pp. 169-83.

Natural Resource Ownership

Abstract

Recommended publications

The Law and the Natural Environment

"Natural Resources, Sustainability & Intergenerational Ethics"

Against “Permanent Sovereignty” over Natural Resources

Natural Resources, Sustainability, and Intergenerational Justice

Natural Resources: The Demands of Equality