Toward Distributive Justice in Offshore Natural Resources Development: Iceland and Norway in the Jan Mayen

As pressures of globalization and advances in technology accelerate, more and more remote, coastal, and small communities are left financially stranded and disempowered. Many communities located at the historic periphery of global markets and trade routes are, often paradoxically, marginalized from the benefits of globalized trade, even while their more accessible natural resources have moved far closer to the center of global markets. The powerful political institutions of nation states combined with growing transnational businesses are driving a combination of boosts in national economies, explosions in technology, and fewer international restrictions on capital. This three-pronged dynamic is reshaping the structure and impacts of an accelerating global economy, creating an international global class of citizenry for whom borders have diminished meaning. As more remote, coastal and small communities are left behind, a new generation of rights building upon protections of the environment, Indigenous peoples, and climate is setting the table to collectively protect entire communities, marginalized as collateral damage to the forces of globalization. This article draws from relevant principles of international law (UNCLOS,) national practice of Norway, the “ Norwegian Model” and other Arctic national views to posit that the evolution of domestic and international law is evolving in the direction of distributive justice strategies that are focused not on individual rights, but rather on the collective rights of marginalized communities to benefit from national policies that would protect them from the downsides of globalization for whom global growth and interconnectedness has not yet met expectations