Home>Who owns the mountain? And to what effect? Capitalizing on competing property titles for prospective mining in Guinea

28.09.2023

Who owns the mountain? And to what effect? Capitalizing on competing property titles for prospective mining in Guinea

About this event

28 September 2023 from 12:45 until 14:15

Presenter: Gustav Kalm
>Bruno Latour Postdoctoral Scholar, Sciences Po

Discussant: Garance Thomas
PhD candidate at Sciences Po Law School

Simandou mountain chain in Guinea in West Africa is the biggest non-exploited high quality iron ore reserve in the world. When put to exploitation, it is expected to double the GDP of Guinea. With the Chinese real estate boom having pushed to the doubling of worldwide steel output in the early 21st century, a host of international mining companies have been combatting for mining rights for the Simandou ore. To date, no iron ore has been mined and only a host of international legal disputes have been filed. Based on ethnography in Guinea, interviews with various participants and an analysis of mining contracts and documents rendered public in the ICSID arbitration BSGR vs Guinea, I compare how the inhabitants of the Simandou mountains, the involved international mining companies and the Guinean government all sought to leverage different constructions of property over the mountain chain to attain a future they desired. I show how each of those parties envisaged a different future for themselves and the mountain and sought to use different legal techniques and constructions of property to make that happen. Not only did they code property differently, but they also held different understandings of what the mountain was and what is a desirable future for which it should be leveraged.

Contact: events.edd@sciencespo.fr

Invite-only event.

About this event

28 September 2023 from 12:45 until 14:15