Natural Resource Governance, Inequality & Human Rights

Natural resource governance is fundamentally about who can decide which resources can be used by whom and about how decision-making around these questions should be undertaken. The outcomes of such decision-making have profound consequences for the distribution of wealth, power, authority and risk exposure at the local, national and international levels.

This component of our larger Inequality Project identifies various sites in which natural resource governance takes place, from human rights and international investment law to private regulation and certification schemes. We consider how both the existence and operation of these sites might create, accentuate or ameliorate forms of unequal distribution.

Project activities include a semester-long seminar and speaker series (Fall 2016), a conference (Spring 2017), a series of panels at the Law and Society Association Conference (New Orleans, June 2016), a call for papers for the 2017 Law and Society Association Conference (Mexico City, June 2017), an ongoing working group, roundtables and panels on various sites of governance, summer internship opportunities for students working with partner organizations  (Summer and Fall 2016 and 2017), fieldwork grants for graduate students, and research reports (July 2019).