Workshop on International Law, Natural Resources and Sustainable
Development
Permanent Sovereignty over Whose Natural Resources? Sovereignty, Natural Resource
Exploitation and New Forms of Dependency Chinese-style
Mary Footer
School of Law, University of Nottingham
This paper reflects on the evolution of issues of sovereignty and natural resources law some
fifty years after the landmark UNGA Res 1803 Resolution on Permanent Sovereignty over
Natural Resources and the ill-fated attempts by developing countries to change the
trajectory of their development process by establishing a New International Economic Order
(NIEO). The desire of so many developing countries to encourage inward foreign investment
in the exploitation of their natural resource wealth whilst retaining sovereignty, control and
a share in the revenues from such activities is being severely tested in the extractive
industries sector throughout the developing world. With the rise of China new forms of
colonial domination in resource-rich developing countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan
Africa, are raising important challenges for many of those countries’ governments.
Of note is the fact that China takes a unique approach to the development challenges, which
its quest for natural resources in developing countries, raises. Instead of a turn to free
market reform and a liberal democratic system, which are often associated with the now
largely discredited Washington Consensus, China supports export-led economic reform and
the pursuit of state capitalism that may be matched by only incremental or no governance
reforms and a large measure of authoritarianism. What has been termed China’s ‘gradualist
approach’ to development may have significant practical implications, particularly for
African countries that are now embroiled in large-scale resource exploitation ventures.
Some have relinquished a large measure of their sovereignty and control over natural
resources in return for increased levels of aid and infrastructure investment from China to
assist their economic development. Whilst the Chinese approach allows for a broader policy
space for developing country governments to find their own best path to development and
modernisation as an alternative to the rapid exposure to liberal markets and ideas, which
were advocated in the Washington Consensus, such short term gains may ultimately come
at a very high cost in terms of the loss of economic sovereignty, new forms of dependency
and a re-drawing of the boundaries of wealth and progress in the developing world.