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Institute
Dieser Beitrag stellt das transnationale Rohstoffrecht und seine Entwicklung aus einer Konfliktperspektive dar und setzt es in Beziehung zu geopolitischen Transformationen und Wandlungen des Entwicklungsbegriffs. Sachlicher Gegenstand dieses Unterfangens sind erschöpfliche Vorkommen von Rohstoffen in Entwicklungsländern, ihre Ausbeutung und der Handel mit den gewonnenen Rohstoffen. Der Fokus liegt auf Mineralien, Öl und Gas. Der Text ist ein Versuch, Verantwortlichkeiten verschiedener Akteure für anhaltende Armut trotz Rohstoffreichtums greifbarer zu machen.
Das Paper geht der Frage nach, welche Rolle Verteilungsgerechtigkeit in Völkerrecht und Völkerrechtswissenschaft spielt. Es stellt zunächst zwei Völkerrechtsprojekte der Nachkriegszeit dar, in deren Zentrum Verteilungsfragen standen: erstens den „embedded liberalism“ Kompromiss von Bretton Woods und zweitens die von den Entwicklungsländern in den 1970er Jahren geforderte Neue Weltwirtschaftsordnung. Nach kurzer Darstellung des Scheiterns von „embedded liberalism“ und Neuer Weltwirtschaftsordnung und der Gründe für ihren Misserfolg, wendet sich das paper der Völkerrechtswissenschaft zu. Zwei zeitgenössische Projekte der Völkerrechtswissenschaft – Konstitutionalisierung des Völkerrechts und Konzeptualisierung des Völkerrechts als öffentliches Recht – werden danach befragt, welche Antworten sie auf die Krise von „welfare state and welfare world“ geben. Während sich der völkerrechtliche Konstitutionalismus nur unzureichend mit dem Verhältnis von Wirtschaft und Politik befasst, verliert die Konzeptualisierung des Völkerrechts als öffentliches Recht mit ihrem Fokus auf das Völkerrecht als Instrument der Beschränkung öffentlicher Gewalt zur Sicherung individueller Freiheit viele Verteilungsfragen gänzlich aus dem Blick. Um das Potential von Recht zur Herstellung von Verteilungsgerechtigkeit auszuloten, scheint daher eine Ausweitung der Perspektive auf transnationales Recht von Nöten. Ausgehend von Gunther Teubners gesellschaftlichem Konstitutionalismus skizziert das Paper Versuche der (transnationalen) Rechtswissenschaft, Fragen ungerechter bzw. gerechter Verteilung zu thematisieren. Das Paper schließt mit der Aufforderung, dass sich eine an Verteilungsgerechtigkeit orientierte transnationale Rechtswissenschaft folgenden Aufgaben widmen sollte: erstens der Bestimmung von Verteilungskonflikten mit Hilfe politischer Ökonomie und rechtspluralistischen Ansätzen und zweitens der Identifikation von Institutionen für einen demokratischen Experimentalismus.
While distribution conflicts over natural resources were central to the debates on a New International Economic Order, during the last decades the specific distribution conflicts surrounding natural resource exploitation no longer have been at the core of international law. In this paper I trace the developments in the relationship between international law and resource distribution conflicts. I first argue that the New International Economic Order favored the political resolution of distribution conflicts over natural resources and envisaged international distribution conflicts to be addressed by the political organs of international institutions within legal procedures Second, I show how the NIEO was surpassed by a different order that relied largely on the market as a distribution mechanism for raw materials and how international institutions and international law played a crucial role in the establishment of this order by promoting the privatization of natural resource exploitation and protecting foreign direct investment and trade. With reference to the copper industry in Zambia I thirdly illustrate how international investment law, and more broadly international economic law, is shaping (and affecting the resolution of) not only distribution conflicts between, but also within States. I conclude with a call for a renewed focus on an international law of resource conflicts to allow for their political resolution given the countermoves we can observe with respect to international investment law and the persistence of (violent) conflicts over natural resource exploitation within States.
Scholarship and practice
(2016)
How can I as an international lawyer, conscious that international law is deeply implicated in today’s global injustices and that the course of history will not be changed by any grand legal design, practice law responsibly? Taking as a point of departure my own desire not to seek comfort in the formulation of a critique of law, but to aspire to a responsible practice, I consult two quite different bodies of work: first, critical theory of law and second, recent scholarship on international law that argues a practice guided by ethics may enhance the legitimacy of international law. I turn then to my own practice of international economic law focusing on my occasional role as legal expert on the so-called megaregionals the EU aims to conclude with Canada and the United States. I propose that the debate on international economic law lacks an investigation into the role of law in shaping political economy; that this lack can be explained by the compartmentalization of expertise which leads to justification gaps with respect to projects such as the megaregionals. One way how lawyers can assume responsibility is to work on closing these gaps even if it means leaving the ‘inside’ of the legal discipline. Finally, I suggest that a responsible legal practice of social change might follow Roberto Unger’s call for institutional imagination. Maybe I can satisfy my wish for a transformative practice by joining forces with friends in experimenting with institutions, hoping to build an alternative political economy.
Große Rohstoffvorräte lagern in den Entwicklungsländern, doch ihre Ausbeutung führt in diesen
Ländern oft weder zu steigendem Wirtschaftswachstum noch zu verbesserten Lebensverhältnissen
der Bevölkerung. Von der Milliarde der ärmsten Menschen lebt fast ein Drittel in
den rohstoffreichen Ländern. Kann das transnationale Rohstoffrecht dazu beitragen, dass die
Verteilung gerechter abläuft und nicht nur die Investoren und Konsumenten der Nordhemisphäre
und der Schwellenländer von den Rohstoffen der Welt profitieren? Die Juniorprofessorin
Isabel Feichtner untersucht die Verteilungsgerechtigkeit im Rohstoffrecht.
Ecolabels are frequently presented as consumer information tools that efficiently promote environmental aims such as the sustainability of fisheries. Two recent WTO dispute settlement cases -- Tuna II and COOL -- have called into question the characterisation of labels as ‘consumer information tools’ by illuminating the regulatory power and purposes of labelling. Tuna II moreover clarifies that WTO law does not necessarily privilege ecolabelling over more openly interventionist government measures aimed at environmental protection. In this contribution I first sketch two views of ecolabelling -- one that depicts ecolabelling as primarily aiming at consumer information and another that stresses the regulatory function of labelling. I then turn to the dispute settlement reports in Tuna II and COOL in order to specify the government authority involved in many labelling schemes. I conclude this contribution with the call for a critical assessment of ecolabelling. The power of ecolabelling may be employed to reshape markets and promote green growth. At the same time, however, it may consolidate a trend that places the consumer at the centre of initiatives for societal change and loses sight of potentially more radical transformations through the engagement of human beings as citizens.
This text is an only slightly modified version of the Herbert Krüger Memorial Lecture that I held upon invitation of the Arbeitskreis Überseeische Verfassungsvergleichung on 4 July 2014 at Bucerius Law School in Hamburg. My point of departure is the observation that even though the economic exploitation of natural resources triggers a multitude of distribution conflicts, international and transnational law treat these conflicts inadequately. While the New International Economic Order had as one of its objectives distributional justice between resource exporting poor states (former colonies) and resource importing high income states (mostly former imperial powers) its demands were never fully realized. Instead a transnational economic law emerged which can be interpreted as itself establishing a distribution order -- albeit a distribution order that is not oriented towards distributional justice, but rather posits the market as the best distribution device. This distribution order has depoliticized and deterritorialized distribution conflicts between resource exporting and resource importing states and has secured – through the promotion of privatizations, protection of foreign investments and dismantling of trade barriers – access to resources for the resource importing states. At the same time it has freed importing states from responsibility for the harms that accrue from resource exploitation to the resource exporting states and their populations. I call in this text for a repoliticization of distribution conflicts at the international as well as the (trans)national level, a repoliticization that may be achieved not only through the reform of political, but also economic institutions.
Even though fiscal sovereignty still counts as a fundamental principle of government, global and regional economic integration as well as increasing levels of sovereign debt severely limit governments’ tax policy choices. In particular the redistributive function of taxation has suffered in the pursuit of economic competitiveness. As inequality rises and attention is directed again at taxation as a means for redistribution, international cooperation appears as an avenue to enable redistribution through taxation. Yet, one of the predominant international institutions dealing with tax matters – the OECD – with its focus on economic growth and competitiveness and resulting tax policy advice prevents rather than promotes national and international debates on taxation as a question of social justice. The paper argues that questions of taxation need to be perceived as questions of social justice and thus as questions of politics, and not merely of economics. Only if taxation is not considered a mere economic instrument can a ‘political economy’ be maintained. The paper addresses the three objectives of taxation – revenue generation, redistribution and regulation -- and how they are affected as governments aim for fiscal consolidation to conclude that governments’ power to freely pursue and calibrate these objectives has come to appear rather as a myth than the core of sovereignty. It then demonstrates how the OECD’s tax policy advice and cooperation in tax matters react to the constraints on governmental taxation powers; how they aim at economic growth and competitiveness to the detriment of (other) ideas of social justice. The paper concludes with a call for (re)integrating social and global justice concerns into debates on taxation.
