Natural resources and capabilities: building a framework for natural resource justice

This dissertation investigates the requirements for a fair allocation of rights to natural resources among individuals and communities at the global level. It develops an original theory of natural resource justice based on the capabilities approach. The capabilities approach has not yet been applied to the natural resource justice debate in a comprehensive way. However, I argue that it is a promising theoretical framework to address the issue of natural resource distribution. The main contributions of my research are the following. Throughout my analysis, I defend individual and collective claims to natural resources and integrate individual rights to resource distribution and collective rights to resource control within a coherent framework. I clarify when special relationships between people and resources are normatively significant and should entail special resource rights. I propose a non-anthropocentric extension of natural resource justice to encompass claims of non-human animals.
The dissertation starts with a critical analysis of the most prominent recent theories of natural resource justice and territorial rights that address questions of natural resource distribution and control (Chapters 2–3). Following this analysis, I argue that there is scope to formulate a new theoretical framework for natural resource justice to solve the current debate’s main shortcomings. In the positive part of my dissertation (Chapters 4–7), I outline and defend principles of natural resource justice based on the capabilities approach. This novel theoretical framework solves many of the issues outlined in the first chapters of the dissertation and contributes to the literature on natural resource justice in an original way. In the last chapter of the dissertation (Chapter 8), I apply the capabilities-based framework previously outlined to the current issue of climate mobilities in Small Island Developing States.