Natural Resources: The Demands of Equality

If egalitarians are interested in the distribution of natural resources, is the implication of their view that share of natural resources, or the benefits flowing from them, should be equal? This paper considers, but rejects, four arguments in favor of equal shares. Instead egalitarians have compelling reasons to prefer an alternative set of principles to govern the distribution of any benefits. The first secures for each of us access to the resources necessary for meeting our basic rights. The second favors equal benefits just in case we have good reason to fear that unequal access to natural resources specifically and perniciously sustains other inequalities -- such as inequalities in status organized according to gender or ethnicity -- and where equal benefits promise to be particularly efficacious in tackling those other inequalities. Our third principle endorses not equal resource benefits but equalizing shares of benefits. We should use the proceeds of any global tax on natural resources, that is, to ameliorate inequalities not specifically in natural resource holdings, but rather to address inequalities across the range of advantages and disadvantages relevant to egalitarian justice. Hence doing the most good, from a broad egalitarian point of view, is likely to require that we disburse natural resource benefits highly unevenly.The argument has important implications for discussions of the appropriation of natural resources, and in turn for concrete issues such as the right to emit carbon dioxide. I show that what is a very familiar 'narrow' egalitarian proviso applying to appropriation of scarce resources ought to be rejected in favor of a 'broad' proviso on appropriation, and briefly sketch the implications of the view for inter-generational justice.