Dr. Elizabeth Hessami, who is a licensed attorney. She has served as a visiting attorney for the Environmental Law Institute for nearly a decade, researching post-conflict natural resources management and specializing in armed conflict and the environment. As well as my professor at Johns Hopkins.
We talked at the end of last year and since then, Trump was sworn in as President of the United States again.
On January 20th at his Inauguration Speech, President Trump stated “drill baby drill” expressing his interest to increase the US’s exploitation and drilling of fossil fuels. He is also a notorious climate change denier. So it comes to no surprise that nationally and internationally there are policies that the Trump Administration will be implementing or receding, - like withdrawing out of the Paris Climate Agreement, that will have an effect on not only the climate globally, but also on international security and relations
With Dr Hessami we specifically talk about the critical minerals deal with Ukraine - to give an overview, The initial deal called for Ukraine to use its mineral resources to repay the United States $500 billion for military aid previously provided. The agreed upon framework does not designate the rights of $500 billion worth of minerals revenues to the United States nor does it include a security guarantee for Ukraine. Rather, the agreement establishes a reconstruction investment fund with joint U.S. and Ukraine ownership. Ukraine will contribute 50 percent of all revenues earned from the future monetization of all Ukrainian government-owned natural resource assets into the fund.
We also discuss how to stay hopeful and actions we can take ourselves during these changing times.
I also want to note that we recorded this on February 21st of this year before any further meetings and talks between Trump and Zelynskyy happened.
Contact and connect with Dr. Hessami: ehessam1@jhu.edu
Sources:
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/26/europe/ukraine-us-mineral-resources-deal-explained-intl-latam/index.html
https://www.csis.org/analysis/breaking-down-us-ukraine-minerals-deal
