Natural resources law, investment and sustainability (2016-2017)

This Natural Resources Law, Investment and Sustainability research project examines the relationship between the institutions that govern foreign investment, sustainable development and the rules and regulations that administer natural resources.

Within the context of this project, several leading experts explored different perspectives in how investment and natural resources come together to achieve sustainable development in developing countries with examples from water, oil and gas, renewable energy, mineral, agriculture, and carbon trading.

This project explored how countries prioritise their policy objectives to achieve their notion of sustainable natural resource use, which is strongly influenced by power imbalances that inform North–South cooperation, as well as South–South cooperation in the international investment regime. Professor Jona Razzaque collaborated with Professor Shawkat Alam (Macquarie University, Australia) and Jahid Hossain Bhuiyan (Northern University, Bangladesh).

Elena Blanco contributed to this project with a chapter on state owned oil companies (SOCs) examining MNCs’ relationship with home and host states in the course of resource extraction. It begins by looking at the early extractive imperial companies from a North–South perspective and tries to contextualize the lasting legacy of colonial plunder as resource extraction politics evolved through the decolonisation period first and the advent of globalization later, until the emergence and growth of South–South investment in the postcolonial world.

• E Blanco, State owned oil companies, North–South and South–South perspectives on investment in J Razzaque, A Shawkat, and J H Bhuiyan (eds) International Natural Resources Law, Investment and Sustainability (2017, Routledge) 203-234.