Working Group: Natural Resource Governance, Inequality & Human Rights

The Natural Resource Governance, Inequality & Human Rights Working Group engages with the distributive consequences of extractive economies and the role of human rights in addressing the inequalities in authority, decision making power, benefit and risk exposure that arise in relation to natural resource governance. The group meets once a month to read and discuss texts on natural resource governance, human rights and economic inequalities. A list of themes and texts discussed in 2015-2016 is available here.

Friday November 20, 2015: Introduction – Human Rights and Environmental Justice 

Carmen G. Gonzalez “Human rights, environmental justice and the North-South divide,”  Anna Grear and Louis J. Kotze (eds) Research Handbook on Human Rights and the Environment (Edward Elgar, 2015)

Monday December 7, 2015: Human Rights and Climate Change

Climate change is increasingly recognized as raising multiple human rights concerns. This week, we look at this question, while also interrogating the representational problems in grappling with problems—such as climate change—that have multiple diffuse causes, where causality cannot be directly determined, and the violence of its effects is often naturalized.

• Jane McAdam and Marc Limon, Human Rights, Climate Change and Cross-Border Displacement: the role of the international human rights community in contributing to effective and just solutions (Universal Rights Groups, August 2015) available here (please read the Executive Summary and Part I).
• Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Harvard University Press, 2011), Introduction.
• Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner ‘Dear Matafele Peinam’ Statement and poem, Climate Summit 2014, Opening Ceremony, available here.

Wednesday February 24, 2016: Climate Change and the Governance of Fossil Fuels

• Leaton, James, “Unburnable Carbon – Are the world’s financial markets carrying a carbon bubble?” (Climate Tracker Initiative, 2013) (executive summary)
• Klein, Naomi, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (Simon & Schuster, 2014), Ch 10 “Blockadia: The New Climate Warriors”
• ‘Suva Declaration on Climate Change‘, Pacific Island Development Forum, 2-4 September 2015
• “Petition to the Commission on Human Rights in the Philippines Requesting for Investigation of the Responsibility of the Carbon Majors for Human Rights Violations or Threats of Violations Resulting from the Impacts of Climate Change” submitted by Greenpeace Southeast Asia and Philippines Rural reconstruction Movement, September 22, 2015

Wednesday March 23, 2016: Business and Human Rights 

This week’s readings engage with current debates around a new treaty for business and human rights, as well as providing historical context and critical perspectives on these debates:

• Please read some of the posts on the blog “Debate on the Treaty: Business and Human Rights” http://business-humanrights.org/en/debate-the-treaty
• Additional (not required reading) Concept note proposed under the responsibility of the designated Chair, Amb. María Fernanda Espinosa, Permanent Representative of Ecuador to the United Nations in Geneva
• Penelope C Simons, “International Law’s Invisible Hand and the Future of Corporate Accountability for Violations of Human Rights” (2012) 3(1) Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 5 (just read pp. 5 – 19)
• Jennifer Bair, “Corporations at the United Nations: Echoes of the New International Economic Order?” (2015) 6(1) Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 159 – 171

Wednesday April 10, 2016: Corporate Social Responsibility 

Following on from previous discussion on business and human rights, this week’s readings further explore the dynamics of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and “stakeholder activism”. The readings for this week provides a legal overview of the CSR field as well as some different ethnographies of corporate social responsibility in the mining sector.

• Kate Miles, The Origins of International Investment Law: Empire, Environment and the Safeguarding of Capital (CUP, 2013), excepts from Ch 4, please read from p. 215 “Corporate social and environmental responsibility” to p. 230
• Some of:
  • Stuart Kirsch, Mining Capitalism: The Relationship Between Corporations and Their Critics (University of California Press, 2014), Introduction
  • Marina Welker, Enacting the Corporation: An American Mining Firm in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia (University of California Press, 2014), Introduction
  • Lara Montesinos Coleman, “Big Oil’s Ethical Violence” Critical Legal Thinking, 19 June 2015 http://criticallegalthinking.com/2015/06/19/big-oils-ethical-violence/

If you have time please also have a look at the following websites:

• BP Sustainability: http://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/sustainability.html
• BHP “Our Charter” http://www.bhpbilliton.com/aboutus/ourcompany/charter

Wednesday May 18, 2016: Indigneous Peoples’ Rights and Free, Prior and Informed Consent 

This meeting will discuss debates around free, prior and informed consent and indigenous peoples’ rights in relation to extractivism. We will discuss two texts, a UN human rights report and an academic article:

• César Rodríguez-Garavito, ‘Ethnicity.gov: Global governance, Indigenous Peoples, and the Right to Prior Consultation in Social Minefields‘ (2011) 18(1) Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 263.

• James Anaya, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, James Anaya: Extractive industries and indigenous peoples Human Rights Council, 24^th session, A/HRC/24/41 (1 July 2013).

It may be useful to quickly look over the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007) and the International Labour Organization Convention 169 (1989) as background to these discussions.

Wednesday September 21, 2016: Human Rights and Nature Conservation 

The relationship between environmentalism and the human rights of local communities is not uncomplicated. There has been a long history of conflict between community rights to land and conservation projects. This week we engage with some critiques of “coercive conservation” alongside a discussion of current processes of what has been called “green grabbing.”

Please read: 

• Hal Rhoades, “World Conservation Congress votes to protect indigenous sacred lands” The Ecologist, 13 September 2016, http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2988121/world_conservation_congress_votes_to_protect_indigenous_sacred_lands.html
• Report of the Special Rapporteur of the Human Rights Council on Indigenous Peoples, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, General Assembly, 71st session, item 66(a) of the provisional agenda, A/71/229 (29 July 2016). 
• Fairhead, James, Melissa Leach and Ian Scoones, “Green Grabbing: a new appropriation of nature?” (2012) 39(2) Journal of Peasant Studies 237 
• Peluso, Nancy Lee, “Coercing Conservation? The politics of state resource control” (1993) Global Environmental Change 199

Wednesday October 26, 2016: Marketized Environmental Governance of “Natural Capital” 

This session examines debates surrounding the economic valuation of nature and “ecosystem services” as well as the increased marketization of environmental governance by reading two text that critically engage with these trajectories.

Please read:

• Sian Sullivan, “The Natural Capital Myth; Or Will; Accounting Save the World? Preliminary thoughts on nature, finance and value” LCVS Working Paper Series No. 3, March 2014, http://thestudyofvalue.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/WP3-Sullivan-2014-Natural-Capital-Myth.pdf
• Rebecca Pearse and Steffen Boehm, “Ten reasons why carbon markets will not bring radical emissions reductions” (2014) Carbon Management, Volume 5, Issue 4

You may also interested in looking at one of the key reports advocating for the increased valuation of nature in economic terms, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB for Policy Makers: 2009).

Wednesday November 16, 2016: Contours and Contradictions of Neoextractivism

The readings for this week explore the contours and contradictions of what has been called neo-extractivism – the extraction and export of raw materials as part of a growth-orientated development strategy, looking particularly at South America.

• Thea Riafrancos “Beyond the Petrostate: Ecuador’s Left Dilemma” Dissent, Summer 2015, https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/riofrancos-beyond-petrostate-ecuador-left-dilemma
• Hans-Jürgen Burchardt and Kristina Dietz, “(Neo-)extractivism – a new challenge for development theory from Latin America” (2014) 35(3) Third World Quarterly