The objective of this workshop is to consider national and international approaches to the governance and international law relating to natural resources and sustainable development. The current economic and ecological climate calls for a reappraisal of the international legal, political and economic framework governing natural resources, defined broadly to include materials and organisms naturally occurring in the environment, such as water, mineral and fossil fuels, and cultivated resources, such as food crops, both renewable and exhaustible. Importantly, the burgeoning maelstrom of multiple crises-financial, food, climate and energy-facing the international community calls for a holistic review of the challenges and dilemmas structuring the legal, regulatory and policy framework governing natural resources.

The issue of international governance and management of natural resources will become an increasingly key area for international research, law and policymaking in the coming years as the contestation and conflict over their ownership and use become more acute. Disputes over control and exploitation of natural resources are already becoming major causes of social conflict, political instability and armed conflict. The centrality of natural resources to global economic growth has meant that the ownership and control over natural resources have been at the forefront of legal, territorial and political disputes between states, particularly between the north and south. At the same time, the links between natural resource depletion and environmental degradation, impoverishment and human rights violations mean that the governance and management of natural resources remains a critical arena for local and transnational contestation. It is critical that these issues be addressed in a comprehensive and holistic manner with prominence given to voices from the south, where these tensions and conflicts are realised in the most acute and often devastating ways.

This workshop will bring together scholars, practitioners, campaigners and policymakers from different parts of the world and from a diversity of disciplines and professional practice to consider these issues with a view towards establishing a longer-term international network to foster research collaboration, dissemination and knowledge transfer.

This workshop is funded by: