Justice and Natural Resources: An Egalitarian Theory

Struggles over precious resources such as oil, water, and land are increasingly evident in the contemporary world. States, indigenous groups, and corporations vie to control access to those resources, and the benefits they provide. These conflicts are rapidly spilling over into new arenas, such as the deep oceans and the Polar regions. How should these precious resources be governed, and how should the benefits and burdens they generate be shared? Justice and Natural Resources provides a systematic theory of natural resource justice. It argues that we should use the benefits and burdens flowing from these resources to promote greater equality across the world, and share governance over many important resources. At the same time, the book takes seriously the ways in which particular resources can matter in peoples lives. It provides invaluable guidance on a series of pressing issues, including the scope of state resource rights, the claims of indigenous communities, rights over ocean resources, the burdens of conservation, and the challenges of climate change and transnational resource governance. It will be required reading for anyone interested in natural resource governance, climate politics, and global justice.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1: Resources and Rights 2: Equality and its Critics 3: The Demands of Equality 4: Rewarding Improvement 5: Accommodating Attachment 6: Against Permanent Sovereignty 7: Perfecting Sovereignty? 8: Resource Taxes 9: The Ocean's Riches 10: The Burdens of Conservation

About the Author :
Chris Armstrong is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Southampton. He works in normative political theory, and in recent years principally on global justice and climate justice. He is the author of Global Distributive Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2012), and many papers in journals such as the Journal of Political Philosophy, Political Theory, Politics, Philosophy and Economics and Ethics and International Affairs.

Review :
stimulating and ambitious an engagingly written and comprehensive account of resource justice, which, along the way, offers illuminating insights into a number of important justice related questions connected to resources Armstrong performs a valuable service by producing a comprehensive account of resource justice. For readers, like myself, who believe that the centrality of the issues surrounding natural resources should elevate their normative treatment to a justice topic in its own right, this excellent book is a "must-read". Justice and Natural Resources is an extremely engaging and well-written account of resource justice. It offers illuminating insights into a number of important questions connected to resources: what they are, who should control them, who should benefit from them, who should pay for the burdens of conservation, and how they should be taxed, to name a few. This is the most comprehensive and systematic theory on this important topic to date. This extremely rich book not only provides the most comprehensive egalitarian account of justice and natural resources to date, but also pushes political philosophers to engage with real world policy questions. It might well become the one reference text which defines the cosmopolitan view on the place of natural resources within debates on global justice.