Governing the Extractive Sector : Regulating the Foreign Conduct of International Mining Firms

This book considers, and offers solutions to, the problems faced by local communities and the environment with respect to global mining.

The author explores the idea of grievance mechanisms in the home states of the major mining conglomerates. These grievance mechanisms should be functional, pragmatic and effective at resolving disputes between mining enterprises and impacted communities. The key to this provocative solution is twofold: the proposal harnesses the power of industry-sponsored dispute mechanisms to reduce the costs and other burdens on home state governments and judicial systems. Critically, civil society actors will be given a role as both advocates and mediators in order to achieve a fair result for those impacted abroad by extractive enterprises.

Compelling, engaging and timely, this book presents an innovative approach for regulating the foreign conduct of the extractive sector.

Leonie Reins is Professor of Public Law and Sustainability at the Erasmus Law School, Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Prior to that she was an Assistant Professor at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society ('TILT') at Tilburg University. Leonie obtained her PhD from KU Leuven, Belgium, where she also worked as a Post-Doc. The monograph based on her dissertation is entitled Regulating Shale Gas – The Challenge of Coherent Environmental and Energy Regulation (2017). Leonie obtained private sector experience whilst working for a Brussels-based environmental law consultancy, providing legal and policy services for public-sector clients such as the European Commission and the European Parliament.

Leonie's research focuses on the intersections of energy and environmental law. She is particularly interested in the regulation of new technologies that are capable of mitigating, or providing means of adaptation to, global problems such as climate change and the associated risks and uncertainty that manifest themselves at the local level. Leonie regularly speaks at international conferences and her works have been published in journals such as Energy Research & Social Science, Environmental Liability and Oil, Gas, Energy Law Intelligence (OGEL).