Justice, Territory and Natural Resources
| Published date | 01 June 2012 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2011.00933.x |
| Date | 01 June 2012 |
| Author | Avery Kolers |
| Subject Matter | Article |
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P O L I T I C A L S T U D I E S : 2 0 1 2 VO L 6 0 , 2 6 9 – 2 8 6
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2011.00933.x
Justice, Territory and Natural Resourcespost_933269..286
Avery Kolers
University of Louisville
Territorial self-determination and global distributive justice seem to be at loggerheads. Cosmopolitans hold that
institutions such as states can be justified only derivatively on global justice. But ‘self-determinists’ insist that territorial
self-determination is independently significant. The current article hypothesizes that the core disagreement is not over
the justification of global resource egalitarianism, but rather over the conception of resources per se. The article
presents three conceptions of resources – the familiar ‘natural resources’ conception, Tim Hayward’s ‘physical’
conception and Ronald Dworkin’s ‘constructivist’ conception – and argues that, particularly when appended to
egalitarian global distribution principles, each is importantly flawed. The article then presents and defends an
‘intentional’ conception of resources as fungible means. This account treats resources as intentional kinds rather than
natural kinds. As such, they can be identified only after discerning whose intentional states are decisive in a given case.
Discerning that is the role of a theory of territorial rights. A resource is such when the morally legitimate territorial
right-holder treats it as a fungible means. The theory of territorial rights is universal, and the resource distribution
principle is morally cosmopolitan; but the determination of what counts as a resource is claimant-relative, respecting
self-determination. The article then works out implications for global justice, with special attention to the global
environment and through comparisons with Hayward’s eco-space egalitarianism. The result is a sketch of a unified
theory of global resource justice, giving due weight to both cosmopolitan egalitarianism and to territorial self-
determination.
Keywords: territory; cosmopolitanism; natural resources; global justice; Tim Hayward
Territorial self-determination and global distributive justice seem to be at loggerheads.
Proponents of the former – call them ‘self-determinists’ – who insist on the significance of
links between particular groups and particular places, typically argue that global distributive
regimes should have only limited weight against claims to territory such as ‘national
homelands’ (Meisels, 2009; Miller, 2000; 2007; Rawls, 1999). On the other hand, proponents
of global distributive justice – ‘cosmopolitans’ – deny that intervening institutions (such as
states and their borders) can be justified except in so far as they are derivative on global
equality ( Brock, 2009; Moellendorf, 2002; Tan, 2001).
In cosmopolitan terms, the division may be understood to be over the robustness of
subsidiarity: whether (and to what degree) basic distributive regimes must bend to accom-
modate smaller-scale conceptions of the good or shared understandings about justice, which
may cause distortions both within and across group boundaries. In self-determinist terms
the division may be understood to be over the degree to which national groups can chart
their own destiny: whether they must organize their political and economic lives around a
global basic structure, or whether they may pursue particular economic and political
frameworks, even if those frameworks make them better or worse off, in distributive terms,
than they putatively ought to be.
The notion of resources is at the heart of this debate. Cosmopolitans need a standardized
conception of resources so that a fair distribution principle can treat all claimants equally.
A self-determinist, on the other hand, wants to ensure that each group can both understand
© 2012 The Author. Political Studies © 2012 Political Studies Association
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AV E RY KO L E R S
resources as it sees fit, and marshal them for its own projects, without suffering excessive
intervention from outside.
In this article I shall outline a theory of resources that purports to unify the two
frameworks. My hypothesis is that the self-determinist objection to cosmopolitanism has
less to do with principles for the just distribution of resources than with what counts as a
resource in the first place. A self-determinist should accept a cosmopolitan principle of
resource distribution, provided that the account of resources is suitably claimant-relative. A
cosmopolitan should accept this claimant relativity because it is grounded in a morally
cosmopolitan theory of territorial rights, and licenses a cosmopolitan principle of resource
distribution for those things that count as resources.
Cosmopolitans may object already that groups’ feelings of attachment to particular places
cannot claim as fundamental a normative status as equality, since normative individualism
would accept the claims of peoples only in so far as they do not derogate from the claims of
persons. I will argue, however, that the claimant relativity generated by a theory of territorial
rights is necessary for equal consideration of all persons; without it, cosmopolitanism fails
to respect the diversity of ways in which persons are benefited or burdened. High quality
of life is multiply realizable.
In what follows I first lay out three conceptions of resources: the familiar natural resources
conception assumed by most liberal cosmopolitans; the physical conception developed by
Tim Hayward; and Ronald Dworkin’s constructive conception. Each has important virtues as
well as limitations, but the limitations become fatal flaws when each conception of resources
is married to a cosmopolitan principle of resource distribution. I then propose an alterna-
tive, intentional conception of resources that avoids the fatal flaws of each approach. This
intentional conception can be joined to a cosmopolitan distribution principle provided we
plug in an attractive, claimant-relative, account of whose intentional states determine
the character of the resource. This account is provided by the theory of territorial rights.
The remainder of the article is then devoted to working out the relationship among the
conception of resources, the territorial rights theory and the principle of distributive justice.
Let me note a few limitations and assumptions of my discussion. First, while I use global
egalitarianism as an attractive standardizing assumption across the four theories of resources,
I do not defend this distribution principle as against any other in particular. My approach
should be compatible with a variety of theories of just distribution per se. It is also
compatible with a range of theories of territorial rights – indeed, with any theory that does
not simply dissolve such rights into individual rights or a single-end consequentialism.1 In
other words, the thrust of this article has to do not with defending a particular theory of
just distribution or of territorial rights, but with the methodological or ‘metanormative’
task of charting the relationship between resource justice and territorial rights.
I also do not have anything to say here about implementation. For convenience I speak
in terms of taxation because that notion captures both the practices of adjusting an extant
distributive state, and of assessing fees for types of transaction. I do, however, make a
significant assumption about the currency of global justice: it must somehow involve the just
distribution of resources. This term is problematic – indeed, the heart of this article is the
theory of resources – but of equal concern is that there is more to justice than just
distribution, and more to that than the just distribution of resources. Nonetheless, justice in
© 2012 The Author. Political Studies © 2012 Political Studies Association
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access to, control over and profits from resources is surely at least part of justice, and it is in
tension with territorial rights, which are widely held to include monopoly control over
internal natural resources.
There are two deeper points where my approach is, I believe, fruitful, but which I cannot
develop at sufficient length in the current article. First is the tension between justice as
non-domination and justice as fair distribution. Cosmopolitans tend to be most engaged
with distributive questions, frequently accusing nationalist and other anti-cosmopolitan
approaches of failing to repudiate invidious global inequalities. But the trade-off is that
cosmopolitan theories have less normative bite against structures of domination that bring
unwilling participants under the reins of coercive global structures of governance. Anti-
cosmopolitans have the opposite problem, pushing self-determination even at the expense
of equality. My approach hopes to capture important strands of each without losing hold of
either.
Second, a growing body of work attempts to integrate environmental concerns into the
theory of justice, particularly global justice. Tim Hayward, whom I discuss at length below,
is a standard-bearer of this movement, thinking deeply and clearly about normative
implications of the distribution of ‘ecological space’, or eco-space. I welcome this long-
overdue development. But even as we address questions of justice in the distribution of
eco-space, we must not ignore justice in the distribution of what we might call ‘geographi-
cal space’, or geo-space – by which I mean the...
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