The Centre for Law & the Environment is pleased to present a Fireside Chat with PhD candidate Ulzii Enkhbaatar on Wednesday, April 23, 2025, 12:30-1:50 pm, in the Terrace Lounge at Allard Hall, on the topic of Community Development Agreements and environmental justice in the mining sector, with a focus on Mongolia. The event is open to UBC faculty, staff and graduate students. Light lunch will be served. RSVP is required to Professor Stepan Wood at wood@allard.ubc.ca.
About the talk: In recent years, Community Development Agreements (CDAs) have emerged as novel mechanisms to offset the adverse mining impacts on local communities by offering tangible benefits in the form of environmental stewardship, local infrastructural development, local hire in a mining company’s bid to obtain the social license to operate (SLO). In this presentation, I will argue that CDAs could potentially become tools of environmental justice by ensuring that large-scale mining developments benefit local communities by addressing and mitigating advserse environmental impacts. Through the case study analysis of the tireless pursuit of environmental lawyers, environmental NGOs, and local communities for environmental justice, this paper will illustrate opportunities for CDAs to achieve environmental justice by ensuring that local herder communities in Mongolia are not disproportionately affected by adverse mining project impacts. Furthermore, the institutional and governance design of the Oyu Tolgoi CDA in Mongolia implemented by the global mining giant, Rio Tinto, will constitute an exemplary framework to highlight the local community benefits through environmental stewardship tailored to local needs in the South Gobi region of Mongolia.
Ulziilkham (Ulzii) Enkhbaatar (she/her) is a PhD student at the Peter A. Allard School of Law, UBC, and in her current doctoral dissertation, she examines the impact of Community Development Agreements (CDAs) on local communities in the vicinity of large-scale mining projects in Mongolia. She explores this issue from the critical perspective of the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) and the institutional approach of the Law and Development (L&D) subfield. With her extensive background in human rights theory and practice, Ulziilkham explores projects geared towards addressing community's developmental needs and aspirations by creating social value through corporate social responsibility and community development initiatives. Ulziilkham has a Master of Laws degree from the Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, and a Master of Arts degree in International Relations and European Studies from Central European University with extensive academic and professional experience in human rights, labour rights, environmental advocacy, security studies, and judicial administration.
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