Securities Law Commons^™

The Renewable Power Of The Mine, Nicolas Maennling, Perrine Toledano

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Access to affordable and reliable energy is key for the mining sector and with rising demand for minerals and falling ore grades, energy demand is estimated to increase by 36% by 2035. Today, energy produced and procured by mining companies is mostly fossil fuel based. This will have to change if the sector is to contribute to the decarbonization of the world economy, needed for countries to meet the target adopted at the Paris Agreement of keeping global temperatures from rising more than 1.5-2 degrees Celsius.

At the same time, the costs of solar, wind and battery storage systems have …

Community-Investor Negotiation Guide 2: Negotiating Contracts With Investors, Sam Szoke-Burke, Rachael Knight, Kaitlin Y. Cordes, Tehtena Mebratu-Tsegaye, Marena Brinkhurst

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Deciding whether or not to allow an investor to use community lands and natural resources is one of the most important decisions a community can make. If an investment project is carried out in a respectful and inclusive way, it may help community members to achieve their development goals, which may include creating jobs and local economic opportunities. But investments come with risks. Investment projects may make the land that community members need for farming and other livelihood activities unavailable for some time. They may pollute local rivers, lakes, air, and soils, or block access to sacred areas or water …

Community-Investor Negotiation Guide 1: Preparing In Advance For Potential Investors, Rachael Knight, Kaitlin Y. Cordes, Sam Szoke-Burke, Tehtena Mebratu-Tsegaye, Marena Brinkhurst

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Deciding whether or not to allow an investor to use community lands and natural resources is one of the most important decisions a community can make. If an investment project is carried out in a respectful and inclusive way, it may help community members to achieve their development goals, which may include creating jobs and local economic opportunities. But investments come with risks. Investment projects may make the land that community members need for farming and other livelihood activities unavailable for some time. They may pollute local rivers, lakes, air, and soils, or block access to sacred areas or water …

Implementing The Ahafo Benefit Agreements: Seeking Meaningful Community Participation At Newmont’S Ahafo Gold Mine In Ghana, Benjamin Boakye, Maggie M. Cascadden, Jordan Kuschminder, Sam Szoke-Burke, Eric Werker

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

In 2008, ten communities in the Brong Ahafo region of Ghana entered into agreements with Newmont Ghana to govern company-community relations, ensure local job creation, and share the benefits of the company’s mining operations. Ten years later, this report, co-authored by Canadian International Resources and Development Institute (CIRDI), African Center for Energy Policy (ACEP), CCSI, and ISP, looks at the communities’ experience of those agreements and suggests how the agreements might be improved. Though the agreements were celebrated for their attempts to include all stakeholders in decision-making, challenges remain around representation, consultation, and participation. New entities established to facilitate multi-stakeholder …

Financing Green: Reforming Green Bond Regulation In The United States, Echo Kaixi Wang

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

In recent years, green bonds have emerged as a way for the financial industry to contribute to environmentally friendly projects, combat climate change, and provide funds for green infrastructures across the world. While the green bond market has expanded drastically across large nations in Europe and Asia, market growth has stalled in the United States, in part due to a lack of promising regulations in the United States. Existing regulations on green bond issuance in the United States only exists in the form of non-binding international guidelines. This Note reviews the benefits and potentials of green bonds both as an …

Costs And Benefits Of Investment Treaties: Practical Considerations For States, Lise Johnson, Jesse Coleman, Brooke Guven, Lisa E. Sachs

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

This paper analyzes the expected benefits of investment treaties, including: increased inward investment, increased outward investment, and depoliticization of investment disputes. It then considers evidence of the costs of investment treaties, including: litigation, liability, reputational cost, reduced policy space, distorted power dynamics, reduced role for domestic law-making, and uncertainty in the law. The authors set forth practical steps that states can take relating to both existing treaties as well as future treaties with an objective of increasing desired benefits and decreasing unexpected and high costs of investment treaties.

Resourcing Green Technologies Through Smart Mineral Enterprise Development: A Case Analysis Of Cobalt, Saleem Ali, Perrine Toledano, Nicolas Maennling, Nathaniel Hoffman, Lola Aganga

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement requires the world to adopt ‘green technologies’ such as renewable energies and electric transportation at an unprecedented scale. While many countries have implemented policies to spur the adoption of such technologies, a lack of focus has been placed on the sourcing of minerals that are required as inputs. As a result, there is likely to be a significant deficit that may constrain the adoption of green technologies.

In this report, we argue that a neglected area in addressing the mineral scarcity challenge is the private sector’s current trajectory for geological mineral exploration and …

Implementing Shared-Use Of Mining Infrastructure To Achieve The Sustainable Development Goals, Perrine Toledano, Nicolas Maennling

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Many of the Sustainable Development Goals will only be achieved if the population has access to basic services, such as access to water, power, transport, and telecommunications. However, in many developing countries there is a lack of infrastructure to guarantee these services and there are insufficient public funds to finance growing needs. In resource-rich countries, the mining sector can play a key role in increasing access to infrastructure. Mining-related infrastructure is often developed to serve the exclusive need of the investors, but if it is shared and developed to serve the broader needs and uses of the host economy it …

Board Rooms And Jail Cells- Assessing Ngo Approaches To Private Environmental Governance, Joshua Galperin

Articles

Staff of the Nature Conservancy often find themselves in corporate board rooms. Staff of Greenpeace often find themselves in jail cells. The Nature Conservancy (TNC) prides itself on its non-confrontational, collaborative deal making, partnering closely with corporations like chemical giant Dow and agricultural lightning rod Monsanto. Both Dow and Monsanto, in fact, are members of TNC’s Business Council along with the likes of BP, Shell, and Cargill. Greenpeace, on the other hand, prides itself on direct action, civil disobedience, and non-violent confrontation. Greenpeace has launched combative operations against Dow, Monsanto, and other TNC collaborators. While business partners praise TNC’s cooperative …