Petra Gümplová is going to present a working paper on 'Popular Sovereignty over Natural Resources'

The article Popular Sovereignty over Natural Resources discusses the concept of popular sovereignty over natural resources and its possible applicability to a broader account of natural resource justice based on a moral interpretation of international law. Leif Wenar’s recent proposal to entrench popular resource sovereignty as a counterclaim to illegitimate uses of natural resources by corrupt and authoritarian regimes serves as the starting point for the discussion of the possible meaning of popular resource sovereignty and its role in an account of natural resource justice. Three key aspects of Wenar’s conception are in focus: 1) the framing of popular resource sovereignty within the current system of sovereign territoriality, 2) the notion of collective ownership of natural resources as the content of popular resource sovereignty, and 3) civil and political rights as the key set of norms determining the conditions of legitimate exercise of resource sovereignty. The article argues that collective sovereignty claims over natural resources can neither be framed exclusively through boundaries of current sovereign states, nor understood in terms of full and unlimited property rights. Concerning civil and political rights, I argue we need to move past the liberal conception of legitimacy toward a more comprehensive human rights-based conception of justice serving as a standard for assessment of legitimacy of both sovereign and non-sovereign entities which have rights over natural resources.

Petra Gümplová presents a working paper on 'This paper is a part of a larger project which aims at providing criteria for a critical appraisal of the international system of sovereign rights to natural resources and at elaboration of a conception which emphasizes limits on states’ rights to natural resources'

This paper is a part of a larger project which aims at providing criteria for a critical appraisal of the international system of sovereign rights to natural resources and at elaboration of a conception which emphasizes limits on states’ rights to natural resources.

In the paper Sovereignty, Human Rights, and Rights to Natural Resources I explore the historical affinity between international law of human rights and rights of states to natural resources and the aim of both systems to realize the international justice. The paper assumes a practice-based approach to human rights and argues that the chief purpose of human rights is to provide a universal standard for regulating the behavior of states, to limit their sovereignty for the sake of promoting welfare and protecting equal moral status of individuals. The key point of the paper is then to show that due to the historical co-originality and due to the transformative impact human rights have had on state sovereignty, international human rights law has direct implication for how we should interpret the scope of states’ rights to natural resources – regarding the scope of resource rights and the conditions of their rightful exercise by states as well as the model of the international system of natural resource governance.

Petra Gümplová presents a paper on 'Sovereignty, Human Rights, and Rights to Natural Resources'

This paper is a part of a larger project which aims at providing criteria for a critical appraisal of the international system of sovereign rights to natural resources and at elaboration of a conception which emphasizes limits on states’ rights to natural resources.
'In the paper 'Sovereignty, Human Rights, and Rights to Natural Resources' I explore the historical affinity between international law of human rights and rights of states to natural resources and the aim of both systems to realize the international justice. The paper assumes a practice-based approach to human rights and argues that the chief purpose of human rights is to provide a universal standard for regulating the behavior of states, to limit their sovereignty for the sake of promoting welfare and protecting equal moral status of individuals. The key point of the paper is then to show that due to the historical co-originality and due to the transformative impact human rights have had on state sovereignty, international human rights law has direct implication for how we should interpret the scope of states' rights to natural resources – regarding the scope of resource rights and the conditions of their rightful exercise by states as well as the model of the international system of natural resource governance.'