Queens Award for International Trade_2004

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Justification

Scope and Aims

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Current Research and Forthcoming Publications

 

 

Justification

In recent years there has been a growing awareness of the need to develop mechanisms for cooperation among nation states in developing natural resources and facilitating the establishment of networks of pipelines and grids on an international basis. This has sometimes been linked to the promotion of infrastructure projects within the framework of regional integration initiatives. On other occasions, it has derived its momentum from multilateral treaty instruments. The legal mechanisms used to assist trans-boundary cooperation can be rooted in international or national law and in public and private law, but usually involve most or all of these in highly complex sets of arrangements. Areas of importance for research include:

  • Offshore oil and gas development, where sovereign states have striven to develop mechanisms forthe development of common resource deposits, involving corporate actors and other stakeholders;

  • Establishment or expansion of cross-border electricity and gas networks, whether in Latin America, Africa, Asia or Europe, where issues of sovereignty are interwoven with issues concerning investment guarantees, security of transit, operating requirements, congestion management, trading, public participation, and environmental and social concerns, and

  • Utilisation of trans-boundary water resources, both surface waters and groundwater, where imperatives of mutual dependency necessitate cooperative arrangements aimed at ensuring equitable access and reasonable allocation of a shared resource.

At the bilateral level, CEPMLP research has focussed on joint development mechanisms that are designed to facilitate cross-border cooperation between the parties, but have usually had little operational impact so far, raising familiar concerns about sovereignty and sovereign rights, whether expressed by an agent of the State or by a `national corporate champion’. In wider terms, the multilateral initiative of the Energy Charter Treaty, especially on transit and the EU experiences in this respect, raise interesting questions about the potential of these experiences as `models’ for other regions with similar problems (such as West or Southern Africa, NE Asia and parts of Latin America. Research on these issues can benefit from a combination of perspectives from several disciplines.