Law Commons^™

Shared-Use Mining Infrastructure In Sub-Saharan Africa, Sophie Thomashausen, Glen Ireland

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

The IBA’s recent Conference, Investing in Africa: Opportunities for Businesses and

the Lawyers Who Counsel Them, held in New York on 24-26 June 2015, highlighted the growing challenges and opportunities related to infrastructure needed for major mining projects in sub-Saharan Africa. The mining sector, which remains critical to many economies in the region, is being hampered by the lack of adequate transport, power and other infrastructure, as was underscored by participants in the ‘Trends in the Mining Sector’ panel. In the current depressed commodity price environment, large investments in infrastructure required to develop major, ‘world-class’ deposits is difficult to justify, …

Natural Resource Contracts As A Tool For Managing The Mining Sector, David Kienzler, Perrine Toledano, Sophie Thomashausen, Sam Szoke-Burke

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

In this report commissioned by the Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe (BGR) on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), CCSI examined the different types of legal regimes governing mining projects in 18 countries to gain a better understanding of mining deals granted and negotiated under different minerals regimes. CCSI compared the provisions of 30 mining contracts from 13 countries, analyzed a selection of mining-related legislative texts from 18 countries, and surveyed the experiences of mining contract negotiations through dozens of interviews with experts, government officials, company representatives, and members of civil society organizations.

The report …

Resource Resilience: How To Break The Commodities Cycle, Lisa E. Sachs, Nicolas Maennling

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

The past year has seen dramatic declines in the prices of global commodities. Between June 2014 and the beginning of this year, crude oil prices fell by 50 percent to around $50 a barrel. Similarly, mineral prices have seen a drastic fall since the peak of the “commodity supercycle” in early 2011. Between then and April of this year, iron ore prices fell by 70 percent, coal prices by 54 percent and copper prices by 40 percent.

Memo To The Obama Administration On The U.S. National Action Plan On Responsible Business Conduct, Kaitlin Y. Cordes, Lisa E. Sachs

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

In January 2015, CCSI sent a memo to President Obama to provide input on the U.S. National Action Plan on responsible business conduct. The memo applauded the U.S. Government’s decision to develop a National Action Plan consistent with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, noting that responsible and rights-respecting outward investment can support sustainable development in host countries, and that the U.S. Government has an important role to play in promoting responsible business operations. The memo urged the government to explore in particular how the National Action Plan can address …

Anti-Herding Regulation, Ian Ayres, Joshua Mitts

Faculty Scholarship

In some contexts, an individual’s choice to mimic the behavior of others, to join the herd, can increase systemic risk and retard the production of information. Herding can thus produce negative externalities. And in such situations, individuals by definition have insufficient incentives to separate from the herd. But the traditional regulatory response to externality problems is to impose across-the-board mandates. Command-and-control regulation tends to displace one pooling equilibrium by moving behavior to a new, mandated pool. Mortgage regulators, for example, might respond to an unregulated equilibrium where most homeowners start with 2% down by imposing a requirement that causes most …