Browsing by Author "Lander, Jennifer"

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    Community Development Agreements and the State’s Extractive Strategy in Mongolia: Participatory Governance or Governance Participation?
    (Routledge, 2020-01) Lander, Jennifer
    This chapter analyses the emergence of a new institution of “accountability” in the governance of the Mongolian mining sector: Community Development Agreements (CDAs). While CDAs in the Mongolian context are part of a global ‘explosion in the negotiation of agreements between commercial developers and local communities’ (Faircheallaigh, 2013: 222), I focus on the ways in which this ‘global’ phenomenon functions within the specific juridical-political structure of the Mongolian state, at the local and national level. CDAs are an institutional solution devised by the central state to “remedy” the conflict-prone relationship between communities, local authorities and mining companies, where local residents and authorities have regularly obstructed mining projects through direct action and various forms of political bargaining. On paper (i.e., the State Minerals Policy 2014-2025), CDAs are intended to ‘support local development and protect community interests’ (Article 3.5). However, this chapter argues that the provision of economic benefits is a secondary function of CDAs, arguing that the strategic impetus for CDAs from the central state is to primarily constrain anti-extractive actions and thereby stabilise the extractive process for companies. While there may be immediate economic benefits with CDAs and a certain level of recognition of socio-environmental impacts of mining, they function as political stabilisers for investment. CDAs provide a concrete case study to see the ways in which the central state attempts to systemically subordinate resistant elements within the national political system to enable global investment in the mining economy, yet without the appearance of domination using financial incentives and law-like mechanisms.
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    A Critical Reflection on Oyu Tolgoi and the Risk of a Resource Trap in Mongolia: Troubling the "Resource Nationalism" Frame
    (Journal of Law, Social Justice and Global Development, 2013) Lander, Jennifer
    Commonly depicted as one of the final frontiers, Mongolia has gained international notoriety since the turn of the millennium for the discovery of an extensive mineral resource base, estimated to hold over U.S. $1 trillion worth of mineral assets spread over 6000 sites (Campi, 2012). Mineral riches, however, have been shown to be as much a curse as a blessing for economic and social development (Auty, 2001; Humphreys et. al, 2007). Since the discovery of the Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold deposits in 2001, Mongolia has leap-frogged from a fairly low position on the mineral-dependence scale to being widely perceived as ‘especially vulnerable’ (Haglund, 2011) to the resource trap; mineral exports comprised 89.2% of Mongolia’s total exports in 2011, up from 32.5% in 2000 (Mongolian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 2011). In the case of Mongolia, the lack of a significant industrial base and high levels of poverty in a sparsely populated landlocked country have triggered the red flags of a potential resource trap in both domestic and international development governance circles (Isakova et. al, 2012; World Growth, 2008; Moran, 2013; Reeves, 2011; Barma et al., 2011). This paper will engage with some of the complexity of Mongolia’s emergence as a mineral-exporting economy and the government’s negotiation of a potential resource trap through committing a sufficient portion of mineral rents to economic diversification and public redistribution. While it is impossible and unhelpful to draw any fast conclusions about the long-term implications of an extractive development strategy for Mongolia, this article purposes to trouble the simplistic frame of “resource nationalism” that has been attached to Mongolia’s governance of Oyu Tolgoi.
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    Doing "Law in/and Development": Theoretical, Methodological and Ethical Reflections
    (Routledge, 2019-08-22) Lander, Jennifer
    This chapter presents an overview of the field of law and development, through a brief account of its evolution as a tool of U.S. foreign policy state in the 1950s and 1960s, through its deconstruction in the 1970s and 1980s, and mainstream revitalisation since the 1990s. Having established the contours of law and development as a sub-field of socio-legal scholarship generally, the second part of the chapter will introduce the author’s research project about the role of transnational forms of law in relation to extractive (i.e., mining) development in Mongolia. It will particularly reflect on the way that critical ‘law in development’ commitments shaped the research questions and methodological choices. The author will also reflect some of the ethical dimensions of doing research in the name of law and development. The chapter concludes with a reflection about how law’s transnational and global character introduces new dimensions of inquiry to the field of law and development, as well as a caution against emerging forms of global legal instrumentalism in relation to development.
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    Indigenous Rights in Mongolia: Challenges and Opportunities
    (2024) Lander, Jennifer; Hatcher, Pascale; Byambasuren, Tseren
    Since 2019, Jenny and Pascale have been conducting research into the complaints submitted by the herders of Khanbogd and Tsoggtsetsei to the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO) of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), which is part of the World Bank Group. A key aspect of these complaints was the claim that Mongolian herders are indigenous peoples and should therefore get more rights according to IFC’s own Investment Performance Standards. Our research is based on analysis of the CAO complaints and agreements, alongside interviews with key stakeholders on the Tripartite Council (TPC) (herders, local government, Oyu Tolgoi (OT) and NGOs) and a focus group with herders. After being delayed by COVID-19, we are grateful to Tseren Byambasuren for assisting us to conduct more interviews in Spring 2022. This short brief is intended for herders impacted by Oyu Tolgoi mine in the South Gobi. It lays out the main conclusions of our research and suggests long term avenues for herders to advance their objectives.
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    Shifting States: The Constitutional Risks of Extractive Development
    (Taylor and Francis, 2021) Lander, Jennifer
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    The Material Constitution and Extractive Political Economy
    (Cambridge University Press, 2023-01-15) Lander, Jennifer
    Mongolia’s recent transition to a mineral exporting economy has much to tell us about the relationship between economic change and constitutional transformation. It reveals how the legal construction of markets invite a bevy of transnational economic and legal ‘actors, norms and processes’ which interact with the national constitution. Natural resource extraction, in particular, is charged with the potential to catalyse material constitutional change within the state, by virtue of its profound socio-environmental impacts, the generation of new conflicts over resource control within the state and the exposure of national institutions to transnational investment norms within the context of volatile global commodity markets.
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    Transnational Law and State Transformation: The Case of Extractive Development in Mongolia
    (Routledge, 2019-11-28) Lander, Jennifer
    This book contributes new theoretical insight and in-depth empirical analysis about the relationship between transnational legality, state change and the globalisation of markets. The role of transnational economic law in influencing and reorganising national systems of governance evidences the constitutional dimensions of global capitalism: the power to institute new rules and limits for national states. This form of new constitutionalism does not undermine the state but transforms it by eroding national capacities and implanting global alternatives. While leading scholars in the field have emphasised the much-needed value of case studies, there are no studies available which consider the cumulative impact of multiple axes of transnational legal ordering on the national state or its constitution. This monograph addresses this empirical gap, whilst expanding the theoretical scope of the field. Mongolia’s recent transformation as a mineral-exporting country provides a rare opportunity to witness economic and legal globalisation in process. Based on careful empirical analysis of national law and policy-making, the book traces the way distinctive processes of transnational legal ordering have reorganised and reframed the governance of Mongolia’s mining sector, specifically by redistributing state power in relation to the market, sub-national administrations and civil society. The book investigates the role of international financial institutions, multinational corporations and non-governmental organisations in normative transmission, as well as the critical role of national actors in embedding transnational investment norms within the domestic legal and policy environment. As the book demonstrates, however, the constitutional ramifications of transnational legal ordering extend beyond the mining regime itself into more fundamental questions of the trajectory of state transformation, institutionally and ideologically. The book will be of interest to scholars of international law, global governance and the political economy of development.
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    Troubling the idealised pageantry of extractive conflicts: Comparative insights on authority and claim-making from Papua New Guinea, Mongolia and El Salvador
    (Elsevier, 2021-01-13) Lander, Jennifer; Hatcher, Pascale; Humphreys Bebbington, Denise; Bebbington, Anthony; Banks, Glenn
    This article challenges simplified and idealised representation of conflicts between corporations, states and impacted populations in the context of extractive industries. Through comparative discussion of mineral extraction in Papua New Guinea, Mongolia and El Salvador, we argue that strategies of engagement over the terms of extraction vary significantly as a result of the interaction between relations of authority and recognition in the context of specific projects and the national political economy of mining. As mineral extraction impinges on their lands, livelihoods, territories and senses of the future, affected populations face the uncertain question of how to respond and to whom to direct these responses. Strategies vary widely, and can involve confrontation, litigation, negotiation, resignation, and patronage. These strategies are targeted at companies, investors, the national state, local government, multilateral institutions, and international arbitrators. We argue that the key to understanding how strategies emerge to target different types and scales of authority, lies ultimately with inherited geographies of state presence and strategic absence. This factor shapes the construction of “community” claim-making in relation to state and non-state authorities, and calculations regarding the relative utility of claiming rights or mobilizing relationships as a means of seeking redress, compensation or benefit sharing. In the context of plural opportunities for claim-making, we query whether plurality is more emancipatory or, ironically, more constricting for impacted populations. In response to this question, we argue that “community” strategies tend to be more effective where they remain linked in some way to the territorial and legislative structure of the national state.