Abstract

Why do we assign to countries rights to all the positive utilities from their natural resources, but hold them under no duty to bear costs for the negative utilities generated by those resources for those beyond their borders? In this paper I suggest that this ‘volcanic asymmetry’ has been overlooked by statist and cosmopolitan theories and that, despite of the arguments that might be given on its behalf, keeping this asymmetry requires further normative justification. I present two ways of getting rid of it, conclude that neither is satisfactory, and point to an alternative path.