Lys Kulamadayil

Legal frameworks addressing the adverse impacts of mineral resources extraction on local communities have proliferated over the last two decades. Most of these norms are based on human rights or at least informed by human rights, explaining why a lot of legal scholarship has explored the “pain of plenty” through a rights-based trajectory. Yet rights are not the only legal norms of relevance. By investigating the broader legal setting in which the “pain of plenty” occurs, this project explores how international rules work for and against local communities.