Project summary:
The transition to renewable, affordable, and clean energy sources is an urgent challenge to address climate change and a complex one due to its economic, social, environmental and geopolitical implications. One of the main issues of the energy transition is that while some energy sources are renewable, their production, storage, distribution and use require certain finite and scarce natural resources. Several raw materials of mineral origin (aluminium, cobalt, copper, coltan, lithium, nickel, rare earths, etc.) are increasingly necessary, intensifying the race between different actors to secure their supply. Law must drive this race, adapting or revising its foundations at multiple levels.
More than sixty years after the proclamation of the principle of “permanent sovereignty over natural resources” by UN General Assembly Resolution 1803 (XVII) in 1962 and in the context of the current global race for strategic minerals for the energy transition, this project aims to analyse the extent to which this principle provides an adequate basis for governing this race and promoting a more sustainable and just future. While the formulation of the principle of permanent State sovereignty over natural resources (SSONR) has not formally changed since its origins, the evolution of its scope in practice can only depend on the evolution of other international rules, their interactions and the changing international context. In today’s increasingly multipolar and multi-crisis world, how will such a principle operate?
To answer this question, the project will examine in depth the content, scope and evolution of the SSONR principle and its interactions and potential conflicts with other international legal norms, such as those relating to foreign investment, international trade regulation, environmental protection and human rights. Specifically, the project aims to answer the following two questions: to what extent does the SSONR principle continue to constitute an adequate conceptual framework for articulating a sustainable and fair future in the current energy transition scenario? And to what extent does the existing international legal framework on foreign investment, international trade regulation, environmental protection and human rights, when interacted with the SSONR principle, provide mechanisms to anticipate, prevent and resolve multi-sectoral conflicts around strategic minerals for the energy transition?
To develop both questions, the project focuses on three dimensions that make up its specific objectives. The first objective is to provide a new conceptual framework to address the analysis of the SSONR principle. The second objective is to determine to what extent international legal standards in various relevant areas and their interaction with the SSONR principle offer elements for clarifying and reinterpreting, in the future, the content and scope of this principle in terms of sustainability and justice in a context of energy transition. The third objective is to propose a reinterpretation, or even a reformulation, of the SSONR principle in the context of energy transition, less essentialist and more functionalist.
Project members:
Mar Campins Eritja, Universitat de Barcelona
Xavier Fernández Pons, Universitat de Barcelona
Xavier Pons Rafols, Universitat de Barcelona
Jordi Bonet Pérez, Universitat de Barcelona
Jaume Saura Estapà, Universitat de Barcelona
Marta Abegón Novella, Universitat de Barcelona
Aurelia Mañé Estrada, Universitat de Barcelona
Teresa Fajardo del Castillo, Universidad de Granada
Monika Prusinowska, Universitat de Barcelona
Gastón Medici Colombo, Universitat de Barcelona
Pol Pallàs Secall, Universitat de Barcelona
Daniel Iglesias Márquez, Universidad de La Laguna
Uzuazo Etemire, University of Port Harcourt
Maria Valeria Berrós, Universidad Nacional del Litoral
Paola Villavicencio Calzadilla
Romain Mauger
Grant I+D+i “PID2023-146791NB-I00: State sovereignty over natural resources and the global race for strategic minerals for the energy transition: The basis for a sustainable and just future?”, funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/FEDER/UE
