Rights to Natural Resources – with Petra Gümplová

From Congo to Afghanistan, natural resources are at the center of
many contemporary political conflicts. Yet the mostly arbitrary
rights to extract and use these resources are rarely reflected upon
in depth. There is a lack of understanding of the historical
origins as well as a critical analysis of our current global system
of natural resource rights. Our guest Petra Gümplová attempts to do
both. In her research, she approaches the topic with a historical
genealogy of international law and with a normative theory of
justice. For her, international law is simultaneously a historical
cause of current injustices and the key to their moral critique. In
her historical genealogy, she identifies three central legal
principles that have shaped the modern resource regime. The Right
of Conquest, the Right of Discovery and Occupation, and the Right
of he Freedom of the Seas: all were invented and justified to
secure valuable access to resources in distant parts of the world.
Like military force and violence, legal considerations formed the
basis of colonial practice. Paradoxically, the postwar development
of international law then provides the tools for a comprehensive
critique of resource injustice. Gümplová advocates a
practice-oriented method of normative theory building. Rather than
developing principles from an abstract and ideal standpoint, she
seeks to draw out the moral implications of current international
law standards. For her, a just postcolonial system of control over
natural resources must be based on the principle of
self-determination and on the comprehensive catalog of human
rights.