Will International Investment Rules Obstruct Climate Protection Policies? PDF Download

Author: Jacob Werksman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 26

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Book Description
Rules governing the global environment and the international economy are currently decided in separate arenas. Yet, environmental agreements can have strong economic implications, particularly with the growing use of market mechanisms. Economic liberalization rules, meanwhile, may limit the effectiveness of environmental agreements. This Climate Note assesses the potential interaction between one important market-based environmental mechanism - the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) - and the framework of international investment law.

Author: Martin Dietrich Brauch
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
To achieve global climate change mitigation and adaptation goals under the Paris Agreement, international investment law should enable and expedite the transition away from high-emission investment toward low-emission investment. Existing international investment agreements (IIAs) providing for investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) fail to advance climate goals and can effectively hinder states' climate action. In this chapter, I discuss the implementation of two main policy options for climate-oriented reform of international investment law - termination of climate-unfriendly IIAs and negotiation of climate-friendly ones - at various governance levels, ranging from unilateral to multilateral action. Given the mounting risks and impacts of IIAs and ISDS, as well as the lack of evidence that they encourage foreign investment flows, terminating IIAs or withdrawing from them appears to be the most effective reform option. States seeking to conclude new climate-friendly treaties or to amend existing IIAs must ensure that the treaties legally distinguish between low-emission and high-emission investments. Climate-friendly IIAs must not hinder climate action ('do no harm'), by denying treaty protections to high-emission investments, limiting their establishment and expansion, removing incentives such as fossil fuel subsidies, and requiring investments to be made responsibly. In addition, IIAs should leverage the potential contribution of foreign investment to climate goals ('do good'), by incentivising, promoting, facilitating, and protecting low-emission investments only, and by supporting a just transition to a low-emission world. In line with broader efforts to reform international investment law, climate-aligned IIAs should also exclude or circumscribe controversial provisions (fair and equitable treatment [FET], legitimate expectations, indirect expropriation, and most-favoured-nation [MFN], to name a few), prohibit treaty-based challenges to climate policy measures, and deny substantive rights and access to treaty-based dispute settlement mechanisms to high-emission investments. Climate-unfriendly investors would instead need to rely on substantive rights and procedural avenues based on domestic laws.

Author: Annette Magnusson
Publisher: Kluwer Law International B.V.
ISBN: 9403542179
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
At the nexus between international investment law, climate law, and human rights law, States’ obligations to protect foreign investments clash with their right – or even their duty – to regulate to protect the planet and people. State efforts at climate change mitigation and adaptation have already triggered claims of liability under the investor-protection provisions of bilateral and multilateral investment treaties. In this comprehensive elaboration on the topic, stellar experts and practitioners describe different types of climate-related investment disputes, provide a thorough analysis of the unique procedural issues that emerge in such disputes, and evaluate the proper balance between States’ right to regulate to fight climate change and their obligations towards foreign investors. Each of the book’s contributions offers a penetrating perspective on this complex matter, touching on such aspects as the following: investment disputes arising from States’ climate measures or actions; whether and how states can file counterclaims against investors in such disputes; the appropriate role for climate science at various stages of arbitration; how to assess damages in cases involving fossil assets left stranded by the climate transition; and whether, on balance, existing international investment law supports or hinders the global energy transition. Along the way, arbitrators and other practitioners will gain insight into how to argue, defend, and assess climate-related investment disputes, using not only investment-treaty case law but also international climate agreements, human rights law, and environmental law. Policymakers are shown ways to design and implement climate policy and investment treaties in order to avoid claims by foreign investors. For policymakers, treaty and contract negotiators, dispute resolution lawyers, and international organizations, no other resource provides such incisive discussion of how to balance treaty-based investment protection against states’ inherent duty to regulate in the public interest.

Author: Freya Baetens
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107434912
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 569

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Book Description
Developments within various sub-fields of international law influence international investment law, but changes in investment law also have an impact on the evolution of other fields within international law. Through contributions from leading scholars and practitioners, this book analyses specific links between investment law and other sub-fields of international law such as the law on armed conflict, human rights, sustainable development, trade, development and EU law. In particular, this book scrutinises how concepts, principles and rules developed in the context of such sub-fields could inform the content of investment law. Solutions aimed at resolving problems in other settings may provide instructive examples for addressing current problems in the field of investment law, and vice versa. The underlying question is whether key sub-fields of public international law, notably international investment law, are open to cross-fertilisation, or, whether they are evolving further into self-contained regimes.

Author: Yulia Levashova
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789462365872
Category : LAW
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book addresses the topical question on how national and international environmental concerns could be adequately integrated into international investment law. It covers the question whether international investment law restricts state sovereignty in an unacceptable way - in particular, the freedom of host states to develop national policies and regulation for the improvement of the environment. The book first analyzes the interaction between international investment law and the protection of the environment, on the basis of concepts such as sustainable development, fair and equitable treatment, and international responsibility. Secondly, several chapters discuss challenges which are encountered in attempts to integrate environmental concerns in investment policies in specific sectors and regions (e.g. climate change, water pollution, renewable and nuclear energy, and the European Union region). And, finally, specific case studies illustrate the legal and policy tensions between investment law and environmental protection, namely Vattenfall's disputes with Germany, legal clashes between Chevron and Ecuador, and multinational mining companies' conflicts in Indonesia. The contributions are written by international experts and will be of interest to policy makers and practitioners. *** Librarians: ebook available (Series: Legal Perspectives for Global Challenges - Vol. 4) [Subject: International Law, Investment Law, Environmental Law]

Author: Rafael Leal-Arcas
Publisher: Kluwer Law International B.V.
ISBN: 9403537205
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
Energy and Environmental Law and Policy Series #41 We know the science of climate change; we know the economics of climate change; we also know the law of climate change. However, we do not know how countries may come together to cooperate on climate change mitigation. In this connection, the role of international trade in climate change, although universally acknowledged, is not well understood. This groundbreaking book by one of the world’s foremost authorities on international economic law not only investigates this role in great depth, but also explains how free trade agreements can be used as a powerful tool to help mitigate climate change. Focusing on the idea of climate clubs—namely the coalition of the willing—among governments, companies, and/or international institutions, the book offers insightful analysis on aspects of the trade–climate linkage such as: formation of climate clubs; legitimacy and accountability; technological cooperation; green patents; how competition law hinders effective cooperation between companies seeking to produce sustainable goods; domestic policy preferences; recognizing States that should legitimately be allowed to be free riders; and sanctions for noncompliance. Three detailed case studies are included: a comparison of the U.S. and European Union (EU) Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) programs, energy security in the Arab world, and EU–Russia energy trade relations. With the author’s conviction that global access to energy, mitigating climate change, and benefit from international trade and investment all can be achieved, this book offers a fresh understanding of the international trading system as a way to reach a prosperous, modern, and sustainable society that will help decarbonize the economy effectively. It will be welcomed by all professionals and policymakers concerned with climate change mitigation, and particularly by those active at its nexus with international trade.

Author: Tomás Restrepo Rodríguez
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031186559
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
The book deals with the question whether the investment treaty law system could be harmonized with the climate change international legal framework and the climate interest that lies beyond. The answer to this research question is divided into three parts. The first examines the relevance of the climate change international legal framework in investment treaty disputes as a natural pre(logical)interpretative stage. The second focuses on the BIT’s content-interpretation, which is the orthodox approach to solve the fragmentation between the system of investment treaty law and the system of international climate change law. Finally, the third part tackles this fragmentation through a heterodox approach that is grounded in the direct application of climate change principles through law ascertainment. Apart from concluding that harmonization between investment treaty law and international climate change law is possible through the orthodox approach to the expropriation and the FET standards, as well as through the direct application of the climate change precautionary principle and the CBDRRC principle − heterodox approach, the book suggests that tribunals are expected soon to openly address climate change disputes in their rulings.

Author: Freya Baetens
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 27

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Book Description
The international developments over the last century, the implementation of international rules and the interaction between different fields of international law have fascinated many legal minds. The expansion of international investment law in particular is occurring at such speed and in such a manner that overlap with other areas of law, such as international rules relating to sustainable development, seems unavoidable. One international rule-set promoting sustainable development is the climate change regime formed by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. Both international instruments form good illustrations of the current groundbreaking trends in thinking about international law. One particularly interesting innovation is that the Protocol explicitly provides for the involvement of private entities, such as foreign investors, to achieve its goals of limiting and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.This Paper first provides a brief overview of the climate change regime and in particular, the different ways in which private investors can participate in the execution of the Protocol, the so-called Kyoto Flexibility Mechanisms: Joint Implementation, the Clean Development Mechanism and Emissions Trading. Secondly, through the analysis of a number of investment protection standards found in most international investment treaties (expropriation, nondiscrimination, fair and equitable treatment, and the prohibition on performance requirements), this Paper addresses the problems that the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol could create for the functioning of investment arbitration (and vice versa). Finally and most importantly, the present Paper makes a number of proposals as to how the Kyoto Protocol and investment protection objectives could be reconciled and even reinforce each other.

Author: Columbia Law School
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Author: William Blyth
Publisher: OECD Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
This publication examines how uncertainty in climate change policy may affect investment behaviour in the power sector and how the costs of transition to a low-carbon economy may be addressed. For power companies, where capital stock is intensive and long-lived, those risks rank among the biggest and can create an incentive to delay investment. The analysis show that the risk premiums of climate change uncertainty can add 40 per cent of construction costs of the plant for power investors, and 10 per cent of price surcharges for the electricity end-users. It also looks at the sensitivity of different power sector investment decisions to different risks and considers the implications for policy development and design.