Seminar with Daniëlla Dam-de Jong

Seminar: “Securing sustainability? A case study of the EU’s approach to critical raw materials mining”

Daniëlla Dam-de Jong, professor of international sustainable development law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies (Leiden University)

Critical raw materials (CRM) mining is crucial for supporting the energy and digital transitions as well as for space and defense applications. These materials are however geographically concentrated, with China taking a dominant position in the value chain. This has sparked competition among the major powers, with the US and the EU declaring a secure and stable supply chain of CRMs a national security issue. In this setting, it is easy to lose sight of sustainability requirements in securing the supply of CRMs. This seminar will first explore the sustainability concerns that CRM mining raises. It will do so through a discussion of case law, primarily before domestic courts, in relation to CRM projects globally. This seminar subsequently zooms in on the Critical Raw Materials Regulation that the EU adopted in 2024 to examine how it strikes a balance between supply security on the one hand and sustainability requirements on the other. Finally, it will compare these requirements with those included in partnership agreements that the EU has concluded with mineral-rich countries, whether in the form of specialized agreements for the supply of CRMs or as part of broader trade- and investment agreements. The purpose of the seminar is to shed light on what sustainability means in a highly geopolitical, national security driven context.

Bio:
Prof. Dr. Daniëlla Dam-de Jong is Professor of International Sustainable Development Law and Director of the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies at Leiden University (the Netherlands). She is also a Member of the Dutch Advisory Committee on Public International Law (CAVV), a Member of the ILA Committee on International Law for the SDGs, Deputy Chair of the IUCN WCEL Specialist Group on Environmental Security and Conflict Law and one of the Editors-in-Chief of the Netherlands Yearbook of International Law. Her research focuses on the contribution of international law to shaping the governance of natural resources at the global, regional and local levels. Her publications include a monograph on International Law and Governance of Natural Resources in Conflict and Post-Conflict Situations with Cambridge University Press in 2015 and a Research Handbook on International Law and Environmental Peacebuilding (co-edited with dr. Britta Sjöstedt from Lund University, 2023).

Contact:
If you want to attend online please contact sustainability [at] jur [dot] lu [dot] se

Partners:
This seminar is made possible thanks to the support of Formas, the Marcus and Marianne Wallenberg Foundation, and the Centre for European Studies (CFE) at Lund University