The Significance of Historical Injustice Concerning Natural Resources

This chapter develops an alternative defence of the climate debt claim via a broader discussion of how historical wrongdoing concerning natural resources could be relevant to climate justice. It first examines climate change as a problem of global justice, arguing that theorists should consider why some groups are more vulnerable to climate impacts than others and to what extent unequal vulnerability could be a result of historical injustice. Focusing on colonial resource exploitation as a significant example of natural resource injustice, it is argued that the legacies of such exploitation will likely be a significant contributor to present-day vulnerability in countries that have since gained formal independence. Such legacies have important implications for our understanding of climate vulnerability; render some climate duties a matter of rectificatory justice, vindicating the climate debt claim; and provide an important lesson in how similar wrongs could be perpetrated through future climate policies.

Revisiting the Global Emissions Budget

This chapter reconsiders the global emissions budget using the conception of natural resource justice defended previously. Noting that this is to adopt a method of partial integrationism, it is shown that the two principles can at least be applied not only to the problem of sharing the emissions budget, but also the prior matter of setting it. Applying the principle of collective self-determination to these problems is found to be more difficult, because it grounds many conflicting claims. This difficulty is addressed by formulating guidelines for adjudicating between self-determination claims. It is concluded that the emissions budget should be set within the parameters of enabling basic needs satisfaction for current and future individuals and protecting collectives from climate impacts that threaten the legitimate exercise of self-determination through territorial displacement. If this allows for more than subsistence emissions, fair international negotiations will be required to distribute any such secondary emissions entitlements.

Limited Territorial Jurisdiction over Natural Resources

This chapter further explores and defends the conception of natural resource justice composed of the principle of collective self-determination and the (lexically prior) basic needs principle. It explains the lexical ordering of the principles and the nature and scope of the resource claims they legitimize. It then discusses how the two principles will work in tandem to support a system of limited territorial jurisdiction over natural resources, and several forms such limits can be predicted to take. A brief explanation of how this account might be integrated into a broader theory of justice concerning other morally significant goods is provided. In response to the objection that this conception of justice is really a form of sufficientarianism, the view is portrayed as a theory of relational egalitarianism for natural resources. A response is also given to the objection that the theory is problematically ideal in the sense that it lacks feasibility.

Sharing the Global Emissions Budget

This chapter concerns how the global emissions budget should be shared, critiquing the equal per capita emissions view (EPC). First, it is explained how theorists have used claims about natural resource rights to formulate the atmospheric commons argument for EPC. Then, drawing on the assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Elinor Ostrom’s work on common-pool resources, it is shown that these arguments invoke a misleading analysis of climate change as a global commons problem. Accurate understanding of how climate change results from overuse of a global commons suggests that proponents of the commons argument for EPC overlook potential territorial claims to the climate sink. Two options for EPC theorists who wish to maintain the view in the face of this critique are identified, but both turn out to necessitate deeper engagement with the question of how rights to the world’s resources should be assigned.

Against Equal Division of Natural Resources

This chapter rejects Equal Division, focusing on Hillel Steiner’s formulation of the view. First, further explanation of why one might take Equal Division to follow from Equal Original Claims is provided. Then, David Miller’s objection is introduced, according to which there is no defensible metric by which resource shares can be made commensurate, given the fact of reasonable value pluralism. The chapter argues that what the metric problem really shows, is that Equal Division possesses insufficient impartiality to satisfy the equal original claims that motivate the view in the first place. This case is made by critiquing the three principal metrics proposed to amalgamate individual valuations of natural resources and thereby render Equal Division both coherent and defensible; namely, economic value, opportunity cost, and ecological space. The chapter concludes that to respect Equal Original Claims, the better approach will be to formulate a Common Ownership conception of justice for natural resources.

Conclusion: Natural Resource Justice and Climate Change

This chapter summarizes the argument of the work. It situates the conception of natural resource justice that has been defended between the (egalitarian) principle of equal division and the (statist) principle of resource sovereignty. As an interpretation of relational egalitarianism concerning natural resources, the view is shown to avoid three of the most common objections to global egalitarianism. This is because the view is compatible with collective self-determination, protects cultural diversity, and avoids the metric problem. The chapter concludes that the method of partial integrationism adopted in the work, considering questions of climate justice by reference to a conception of justice for natural resources alone, has been productive. A remaining task is to integrate this conception of natural resource justice with a more general theory of global justice, encompassing other important goods, institutions, practices, and relations.

Historical Emissions Debt

This chapter turns to the question of historical responsibility for unavoided climate impacts. It introduces the climate debt claim, according to which certain wealthy or industrialized states owe a debt of compensation to some of those suffering from the unavoided impacts of climate change; where the notion of a debt indicates that the obligation in question falls within the domain of rectificatory justice. The Historical Emissions Debt view, according to which climate debts arise when parties emit more than their fair share of greenhouse gases, is rejected on the basis that there is no fair shares principle for historical use of the climate sink considered in isolation. Two interpretations of the beneficiary pays principle are found to face similar problems. Since none of these accounts appear defensible, it is concluded that those seeking to substantiate a climate debt claim would do better to attempt this by other means.

Contractualist Common Ownership and the Basic Needs Principle

This chapter draws on Charles Beitz’s account of natural resource justice to defend a method of justification that can be used to develop the Common Ownership view. This method employs an original position device, familiar from contemporary social contract theory, and the resulting view is therefore termed ‘Contractualist Common Ownership’. This understanding of Common Ownership is motivated by arguing that it is an apt interpretation of Equal Original Claims. Two key objections to this approach are anticipated and addressed. Contractualist Common Ownership is then used to reconsider and reject the principle of equal division. It is argued that instead, the parties would first secure agreement on a basic needs principle. However, it is also argued that this sufficientarian principle would not be accepted in isolation; parties would seek agreement on further principles of justice for the assignment of rights to natural resources, beyond what is required for basic needs.

Global Justice and Natural Resources

This chapter starts by looking at what natural resources are and their place in a theory of justice. It identifies two forms that claims to natural resources tend to take: general claims and particular claims. General claims are then used to formulate a simple argument to show that natural resources are appropriate objects of egalitarian justice, because they are the subject of equal original claims. There follows a discussion of how best to understand Equal Original Claims, in terms of four understandings of original ownership that are common to Western political philosophy: No Ownership, Joint Ownership, Equal Division, and Common Ownership. No Ownership and Joint Ownership are dismissed on the basis that they are incompatible with Equal Original Claims, leaving Equal Division and Common Ownership as the two remaining contenders.

Introduction: Global Justice and Climate Change

This chapter introduces climate change as a problem of natural resource justice by outlining some real-world examples of resource conflicts that are being generated, or exacerbated, by climate change. It then provides some necessary background for the discussion to follow. The science and predicted impacts of climate change are explained, along with the options for responding to this problem, such as mitigation and adaptation. The chapter then briefly introduces the debate about global justice and climate change, as it has appeared in the political philosophy literature, looking at the human rights approach, the distributive justice approach, and the key methodological distinctions between integrationism and isolationism and ideal versus nonideal theory. After providing further characterization of, and motivation for, the natural resources approach to climate justice that is taken in the work, it concludes with an outline of the chapters to follow.