Of course, within the beginning nobody owned
natural resources — the items or qualities of nature that have
utility for humans. Gradually however people came to assert the
spaces that resources occupied: good habitation sites, hunting grounds, source
areas of sustenance. specifically, with the appearance of
agriculture some 10 thousand years ago, controlling arable lands provided the
idea for claims of land ownership. Throughout history, claimed
ownership might be maintained in three basic ways: (1) force, (2)
negotiation, or (3) exchange. Until recently force (of arms) was the key means
for exercising ownership, but lately negotiation (politics and diplomacy) and
exchange (economics) is perceived as a more robust (less risky) way
for claiming resource space… not that force (or its threat) has disappeared.
Today, sovereign nation-states are deemed because the “owners” of the
natural resources they'll control. Resources out of their control
(e.g. those of other states, high seas resources) is also claimed
but aren't “owned”.
