BrisMUN ‘18

INTRODUCTION
As the human population increases, so too does our demand for resources to satisfy our
requirements. Sitting at a human population of 7 billion, with an expected rise within our
lifetime to over 9 billion, our hunger for non-renewable resources are likely to increase.
Our demands start at energy production with fossil fuels or nuclear fuels, and range to the
particularly high demands in manufacturing and electronics for minerals and metals, all which
take millions of years to form. This highly unsustainable practice of consuming materials
within phenomenally smaller periods of time to the rate at which they form presents the issue
for our committee.

The demands for non-renewable resources pan across economic and social spectrums.
Ranging from developing non-renewable resource economies (NREs)1 to the special
and precious metals for information technology (IT), consumer electronics, and energy
production.2

In 2008, for example, the annual sale of mobile phones and computers accounted for 3% of
world production of gold and silver, 15% of palladium, and over 20% of cobalt. Consequently,
with the increases in demand for these metals and the associated price increase, economies
may fail to distribute the benefits of this new wealth from resource-booms like oil and fail to
diversify their exports, producing a vulnerability to volatile or plummeting prices.

Add on top of this the commitments to combatting climate change enshrined within the Paris
Agreement of 2015 and the fundamental acknowledgement by States to:

Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial
levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial
levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change;
(Article 2, FCCC/CP/2005/L.9/Rev., Paris Agreement)3

The complexity of the issue tied in with climate change cannot simply be a transition to
renewable energies because current requirements for solar cells, wind turbines, and hybrid
car batteries all call for non-renewable resources such as cobalt, lithium, and gold.
Thus, at this point, it is important to draw the distinction in this context for fossil energy
resources, and non-energy resources (such as metal resources):

• Fossil energy resources are consumed, and the usable part of the energy cannot be
recycled.

• Metal resources are used, not consumed, and can be recycled. This waste is merely “raw
material at the wrong place.”4

1 MF Working Paper – Transforming Non-Renewable Resource Economies (NREs)

2 Secondary Raw Material Sources for Precious and Special Metals, Non-Renewable Resource
Issues: Geoscientific and Societal Challenges (p. 196)
3 https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09r01.pdf
4 Stretching the Availability of Non-renewable Resources, Non-Renewable Resource Issues:
Geoscientific and Societal Challenges (p. 186)

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CONTENTS
Introduction2

Committee Scope 4
Overview4
Reform4

Context / Issues 5
Fossil Fuels & Non-Energy Resources 5
Sustainable Development 6
Export Diversification 6
Resource Extraction Governance 6
Factors Impeding Structural Change 7

Previous Actions 9
Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda 9
Millennium Development Goals 9

QYSBATA12

QARMA13

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COMMITTEE SCOPE
Overview

Its full name being the Economic and Social Council and enshrined within Chapter X of the
United Nations Charter1, ECOSOC has gone under multiple levels of reform since its formation
when the United Nations was founded. Under Article 61, ECOSOC consists of fifty-four (54)
Member States elected by the General Assembly and under Article 62, the Council concerns
itself with making or initiating studies and reports related to international economic, social,
cultural, education, health, and related matters. Its recommendations (paragraph 2, Article
62) are for the purpose of promoting respect for, and observance of, human rights and
fundamental freedoms for all. It also has within its mandate the possibility to prepare draft
conventions which would be submitted to the General Assembly and may also call together
international conferences that fall within its mandate.

Reform

ECOSOC’s reforms have been effected by two resolutions in the past, Resolution 61/162, and
68/13. Ultimately these reforms changed ECOSOC in the following ways:

• Annual theme: The Council now leads the UN through an issue-based approach to
guide the direction of its subsidiaries, with the 2018 (July 2017 – July 2018) theme being
“from global to local: supporting sustainable and resilient societies in urban and rural
communities”4

• High Level Segment: The change in the calendar for ECOSOC meetings begins in July of
each year. This segment commences with the high-level political forum on sustainable
development, the annual ministerial review, the development cooperation forum, and
dialogue with non-governmental and intergovernmental groups

Please note: It is recommended that delegates in the committee make use of the existing
subsidiary bodies at the disposal of ECOSOC. ECOSOC may request reports from these bodies
or may adjust the operational direction of the group. These subcommittees can be viewed
here: http://www.un.org/en/ecosoc/about/subsidiary.shtml.

ECOSOC’s contemporary operations concerning sustainability mean that it concerns itself

with all international conferences that are connected to the three pillars of sustainable
development5 - economic, social, and environment. It is “the unifying platform for integration,
action on sustainable development and follow-up and review”.

1 http://www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/chapter-x/index.html
2 http://undocs.org/A/RES/61/16
3 http://undocs.org/A/RES/68/1
4 http://sdg.iisd.org/news/ecosoc-sets-themes-for-2017-2019-sessions/
5 https://www.un.org/ecosoc/en/sustainable-development

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CONTEXT / ISSUES
Fossil Fuels & Non-Energy Resources

The years preceding 2000 are marked as a period in which the use of fossil fuels as energy
resources were remarkably high.6 Approximately 25% of the world population, living in
industrialised countries, disproportionately consumed 70-80% of the world’s energy and
mineral resources, whilst coal was an exception. As countries such as the BRICS group,
consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa continue to grow, their demands for
these resources particularly surge because of their large populations, accounting for over 40%
of the world population, and constituting over 25% of the world’s land mass.7 The table below
for instance indicates the country’s use as a percentage of global consumption.

In addition to this, the requirements of materials to produce higher-end products has also
increased over time, disproving the assumption that the more developed a country, the less
materials it requires to produce sophisticated products. For instance, cars a century ago
used to require basic materials such as iron/steel, copper, tin, and lead. Today, they require
a greater variety of metals such as steel, aluminium, zinc, and for its electronic components,
technology metals and precious metals.8

Another example would be computer chips which in the 1980s required potentially 12
minerals or elemental components; a decade later it increased to 16, and as of 2009 required
as many as 60 different minerals or constituent components. This poses a risk of short-supply
and scarcity despite the current perception of ample supply, which could then lead to a
dramatic increase in price of these products, a particular threat to consumer markets.

6 A hierarchy of natural resources with respect to sustainable development – a basis for a natu-
ral resources efficiency indicator by Wagner and Wellmer (2009)
7 http://time.com/4923837/brics-summit-xiamen-mixed-fortunes/
8 Non-renewable Resource Issues: Geoscientific and Societal Challenges: An Introduction

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This is without factoring in risk of physical depletion of a resource. The general logic
concerning the physical mining of resources is that companies need to be able to balance
known reserves of minerals, achievable from exploration and exploration companies, with
the number of commodities that they produce. If a resource becomes particularly scarce or
depleted, there are arguments that technology will shift to more efficiently use of those scarce
materials, or that demand for that material will shift to another.

Sustainable Development

The principle of Sustainable Development can be succinctly described as a path which allows
each future generation the potential of being equally well-off as its predecessors.9 The
questionable contradiction though is whether finite natural resources could be considered
consistent with sustainable development, even for renewable energies such as nuclear power
with its use of uranium and plutonium. The response to this contradiction could be that
sustainable development is possible with the continued use of natural resources extracted
from the earth, the re-use and recycle of materials, and human creativity which could lead
to other sources of extraction, more efficient means of exploration, or perhaps alternative
sources to satisfy the function of the depleted resource.

As mentioned in the introduction, there are generally two categories with which natural
resources can be classified within this context, fossil fuels which are completely consumed,
and metals, which can be recycled for re-use. Logically, fossil fuels can only last for a finite
amount of time, whilst metals are for most intents and purposes renewable resources.
The very clear obstacle though is that technology has not developed to a level where metal
resources can be recycled to the most efficiency.

The alternative to those resources is to research and develop efficient use of non-metallic,
non-energetic mineral resources. Humankind’s creativity may lead to finding new solutions
for the functions of these natural resources. The exception to this though is the nitrogen,
potassium, and phosphate required in essential agricultural fertilisers as there is no
replacement for them, and plants require them.

Export Diversification

Some developing countries have been demonstrated to face difficulty in breaking the
reliance on non-renewable resources.10 The IMF in its working paper identified that furthering
economic growth often correlated with examples of successful diversification of exports
away from mining and consumption-based services. Indonesia, Chile, and Syria for example
had diversified their exports in non-resource merchandise such as music equipment, foot-
wear, garments, and data processing machines from Indonesia, and wine, fish and copper
wires from Chile. On the contrary, Bolivia, Iraq, and Mali, export a single non-renewable
resource attributing to over 40% of their exports. Diversification of exports for policymakers
often present opportunities for growth, and protections against volatility, where mining and
agriculture present themselves are more volatile sectors than manufacturing.

Resource Extraction Governance

It is often expected that laws pertaining to mining dictate that natural resource extraction

9 http://www.iisd.org/topic/sustainable-development
10 https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2015/wp15171.pdf

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must be conducted in a manner which benefits the country. It may sometimes be in the
interests of a State to prolong the lifetime of resource extraction operations because they
require government infrastructures. An airport would have to be built and operated for the
duration of a remote mine for instance, and it likely would not benefit the country if that
airport was short-lived. Further recommendations for government regulation on mining can
also require companies to disclose publicly, or to governments, the results of exploration,
otherwise lack of disclosure might affect the State’s calculation of providing infrastructure.

Factors Impeding Structural Change

Convincing nations that fundamental economic restructuring is necessary to avoid massive

environmental and resource depletion shocks is only a starting point for change; it is also vital
to provide nations with an actual mechanism to enact this change without sacrificing other
national priorities.

For example, it is often argued that a massive reduction in carbon-heavy industrial activity
is necessary to address issues of climate change. However, nations are often unwilling to
make those reductionsin the timeframes necessary, if it would involve a particular shock to
industries or resources they rely on. This could occur either through a direct harm against
their own national industries, or a global increase in prices of certain resources that they
require (as supplies dwindle).

In broader geopolitical frames, nations may be unwilling to make these changes to their
economy (or agree to them in the global economy) if it would put them at a disadvantage
against national competitors or ideological rivals. On a base level, this especially manifests
as nations refusing to make changes unless all national competitors agree to equal or more
severe changes — unless a full consensus can be gained, countries often see no value in even
a partial consensus.

This is especially compounded by the fact that it is very difficult to contrast the severity of
structural changes in different economies. If two nations make equal commitments to reduce
their carbon emissions, but one of those nations has significantly greater capacity to shift to
lower-carbon technologies instead (or outsource their production to allied nations), then this
restructuring may have substantially greater detriment on the second nation even though the
agreement seems equal on paper.

There is also the possibility that simply switching our resource use to more renewable or
environmentally resources may not be sufficient; even if humanity managed to produce a vast
excess of clean energy (or other resources), it is possible that this would cause energy pricing
to drop so low that humanity’s use of energy would vastly expand again, hence solving very
little in the long-run. A recent example of this phenomenon is the rise of cryptocurrencies,
which essentially transform cheap electricity in countries like China into computing power
and then into a new form of currency. It is by no means certain that producing enough
clean energy to satiate our wastefulness as a species would prevent us from subsequently
becoming even more wasteful.

If that is true, then economies may face the daunting prospect of restructuring themselves
completely around non-physical resources (such as creative work, education, or other services
that take almost no traditional resources to provide). Transitioning an economy completely
to use of these industries would require massive adjustments in societal values (what would
consumerism mean in such an economy, for instance?) and a massive creation of both supply

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and demand within those industries. Governments would also approach this challenge very
differently depending on their style of economic control, making global consensus harder to
attain.

Finally, future technologies could also radically shift the supply of both physical and non-
physical resources, posing further structural challenges. If 3D printing became fully ubiquitous
in homes, for instance, economies may need to restructure themselves from provision-
of-goods-to-retail models into provision-of-raw-materials-to-homes models, which pose
immense logistical challenges (let alone affecting which materials are considered necessary
for production of goods).

In this context, the challenge may be posed as: Nations are increasingly aware that their
current use and abuse of certain resources is unsustainable, but are unwilling to restructure
their economy radically to solve these issues because the proposed solutions would either
a) demonstrably put them at a disadvantage compared to other nations, or b) pose too
much risk of requiring a heavy investment and effort to build, without any guarantee of
invulnerability to further, future economic shocks and shifts in economic model.

The committee should therefore understand that although it is necessary to provide further
guidance on implementation of sustainable development and resource use, this alone is
not sufficient. Delegates must also determine how to (re)structure the global economy and
international politics to actually make these implementations possible and compatible
with national interests, and may wish to propose entirely new economic models which
involve more than a simple shift from non-renewables to renewables, to safeguard against
encountering these issues again in future.

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PREVIOUS ACTIONS
Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda

ECOSOC can be considered one of the premier organs of the United Nations which concerns
itself with sustainable development. The Sustainable Development Goals represented a new
era for ECOSOC’s work, particularly the transition from the Millennium Development Goals
to the new SDGs. Contained within Resolution 70/111, adopted by the General Assembly, was
a 2030 Development Agenda and 17 goals with which ECOSOC’s High Level Political Forum
would:

“facilitate sharing of experiences, including successes, challenges and lessons learned, and
provide political leadership, guidance and recommendations for follow-up. It will promote
system-wide coherence and coordination of sustainable development policies. It should ensure
that the Agenda remains relevant and ambitious and should focus on the assessment of
progress, achievements and challenges faced by developed and developing countries as well as
new and emerging issues”
(Paragraph 82, Resolution 70/1)

As part of this process, Member States may voluntarily conduct national reviews on their
implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the 17 SDGs. It is also the role of the HLPF to review
global progress towards achieving these two items. Delegates may during debate consider
which countries have submitted reviews in the past and support or endorse specific countries
to submit reviews at the next HLPF meeting.

Useful links on the Voluntary National Reviews:

https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/17035Compilation_of_Main_
Messages_from_2017_VNRs.pdf.
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/vnrs/

Whilst the HLPF of 2017 highlighted on its agenda the SDGs of no poverty (1), zero hunger
(2), good health and well-being (3), gender equality (5), industry, innovation & infrastructure
(9), and life below water (14), the priorities of 2018 have been decided to be clean water
& sanitation (6), affordable and clean energy (7), sustainable cities and communities (11),
responsible consumption & production (12), and life on land (15). Accordingly, it is expected
that delegates refer to and effect clauses which address and relate to these goals during their
debates and document writing. The topic however will mainly concern goals 7, 11, and 12.

Millennium Development Goals

The Millennium Development Goals, the precursors to the SDGs, were eight goals adopted in
2000 with the ideal of being able to meet the needs of the poorest. The Millennium Summit
was the culmination of decades of multilateral meetings and summits, leading to a global
partnership to reduce extreme poverty with a 2015 deadline. With the ideals of eradicating
poverty, promoting gender equality, and improving global health, in 2008 the High-level Event
on the MDGs led to an estimated $16 billion of commitment to meet the goals by individual

11 https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld

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Member States12, including $1.6 billion to bolstering food security, more than $4.5 for
education, and $3 billion to combatting malaria.13

In 2010, with the deadline ever encroaching, the public and private sectors at the Summit
on the Millennium Development Goals with the aim of accelerating efforts towards women’s
and children’s health, committed to over $40 billion of resources over the 5 years that were
to come. Add to this a further $2.5 billion in 2013 when States agreed to convene in 2015 to
adopt a new set of goals that built on the successes and failures of the MDGs.

The Millennium Development Goals inherently concerned themselves with those in the global
south. The framework built around the MDGs could be considered something of a top-down
approach, since those goals were more relevant to the developing countries than those in the
global north. Opinions on the success of the MDGs were varied, it is hard to truly determine
whether they made a difference directly, raised more awareness than effect action, or
contributed to no change than the status quo.14 15 16 17

12 http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/2008highlevel/commitments.shtml
13 http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/bkgd.shtml
14 https://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-hobbes/the-millennium-develop-
ment-goals-were-bullshit_b_8114410.html
15 https://theconversation.com/how-the-millennium-development-goals-failed-the-worlds-
poorest-children-44044
16 https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2017/mar/30/
how-successful-were-the-millennium-development-goals
17 https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/datablog/2015/jul/06/what-millenni-
um-development-goals-achieved-mdgs

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QYSBATA
(Questions You Should Be Able To Answer)

• What do the terms natural resources (metal), and fossil resources (non-renewable) mean?

• Who can ECOSOC empower and authorise?

• What can ECOSOC not do?

• What ECOSOC subsidiary bodies concern me and this topic?

• What Sustainable Development Goals concern this committee the most during committee?

• What, if it has been submitted, is in my country’s Voluntary National Review for the SDGs?

• What are my country’s main exports?

• What is my country’s metal or resource consumption/usage?

• From what sources does my country generate electricity?

• What large or considerable mining or resource extraction projects occur within my

country, or are conducted by my government?

• Does my country have any specific or unique mining regulations that could be
recommended to the committee?

• Does my government have any ethical issues concerning mining/extraction?

• What is my country’s stance on fossil fuels, non-renewables, nuclear power, and

renewable energy?

• What is my government’s policy on recycling and waste, including nuclear waste?

• What mining practices could be banned in an international agreement?

• What proposals has my nation or region considered for alternative economic structures to
address global renewability issues?

• What alternative economic structures would my country be opposed to?

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QARMA
(Questions A Resolution Must Answer)

• How should national and international economies be structured to best safeguard against
resource crises into the future?

• How would any proposed, fundamental changes in economic structure mesh with existing
human desires to consume and stockpile resources?

• Do any mechanisms of international trade need to be structured to safeguard against

resource crises?

• How should guidelines on transitions to non-renewable energies be structured to best

enable nations to participate without sacrificing other national interests?

• Do certain nations, economies, or political structures have a higher burden than others to
change to prevent future global resource crises? How?

• Which, if any, ECOSOC subsidiaries will be directed to effect committee recommendations?

• Should there be any incentives for States to submit their Voluntary National Reviews?

• What Sustainable Development Goals are relevant to this Resolution?

• What recommendations does ECOSOC have for mining good practice and governance of
resource mining, including exploration?

• What recommendations or assistance can the committee provide for Low Income Non-
Renewable Economies?

• What recommendation does ECOSOC propose for efficient nuclear waste disposal?

• What recommendations, or what subsidiary, could ECOSOC empower to report on non-

metallic, non-energetic mineral resources?

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