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An advantage of invoking the range of these fundamental human interests is, on the one hand, that it helps to lay out the plurality of values natural resources have for the humans and the degree to which natural resources are necessary for the fulfillment of these interests and, on the other hand, to determine and justify the claims to natural resources – not just distributive claims but also claims concerning property rights and the use of natural resources by others. Another distinct advantage of a rights-based approach is that it enables individuals and collectives to articulate their demands to natural resources in dynamically changing historical and socio-economic contexts and offers a universal language to articulate various kinds of injustices arising in connection with natural resources – the exclusion, the lack of access, control, or participation, (distributive) inequality, dispossession, violence or political oppression perpetrated in relation to natural resources. Rights are legal entitlements and create obligations for those who are defined as duty bearers with legal duties to uphold these rights. Taking water as an example, the rights-based approach implies that justice is best served not merely by defining sufficient shares of water and global redistributive policies but by defining an access to water as an essential human right to be protected and upheld by specific actors (Gleick 1998). In fact, such right already exists. The access to clean water and sanitation was declared as a human right by a UN Resolution in 2010, based on the recognition that clean drinking water and sanitation are essential to the realization of other human rights, especially the human right to adequate standard of living and the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health as well as to human dignity. A human right to water implies that water should be available, of sufficient quantity and quality, and physically as well as economically accessible on a non-discriminatory basis to everyone; and that states who are the primary duty bearers with respect to human rights ought to ensure the equitable access to water and sanitation for everyone by organizing a system of water resources management, drinking water distribution, and sanitation and wastewater services in given (and changing) circumstances. By defining legal rights holders and duty bearers, the rights-based approach thus frames the process of effective policy making while at the same time making it possible to seek an effective remedy for actors whose rights have been violated.73
3.3
Natural Resources as Burdens
The third important point about natural resources Armstrong makes is that resources have to be seen not only in terms of benefits they deliver but also in terms of possible burdens – burdens that they in themselves inflict or burdens that may arise in the process of resource use. Given the significance of harms related to natural resources, a theory of natural resource justice should seek to distribute not only the benefits arising from the use of natural resources but also the burdens in such a way as to equalize access to wellbeing for all people including the future people. What are burdens and what kinds of burdens are natural resources related to?
73 In the practice, the most urgent question has been whether the privatization of the delivery and management of water resources should be privatized and whether it really translates into more efficient water management. The evidence suggests to the contrary: privatization leads to price hikes and hence the lack of access to water for the poor (Gilbert 2018, 55). In the practice, water rights have been pursued and adjudicated in courts in countries such as Bolivia, India, Israel, Bulgaria, or Botswana (Winkler 2012; Thielbörger 2013).