Christine Schwöbel-Patel (University of Warwick) will deliver a lecture examining the legal dimensions of natural resource extraction in the context of climate change, the energy transition and geopolitical competition over critical resources. Drawing on critical approaches to international law, she explores how legal frameworks facilitate and legitimise extractivism, a system associated with dispossession, environmental degradation and social inequality. Particular attention will be paid to the extraction of critical minerals required for renewable energy technologies and the implications for a just energy transition. The lecture forms part of an ongoing research project investigating the role of law in the creation of new ‘energy sacrifice zones’ in the shift towards a green economy.