Reforming International Investment Law to Align with Climate Change

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides a comprehensive analysis of the conflict between investment law and climate policy, offering a framework for further research on treaty reform.

🏢実務担当者:Highlights how new treaty language can protect climate measures, useful for corporate legal teams assessing investment risks in the energy transition.

🏛政策担当者:Offers concrete reform options for investment treaties to align with climate goals, relevant for trade and environment ministries.

Chapter 8 is written by Kabir Duggal and Andrés Alvarez Calderón and is titled “Reforming International Investment Law to Align with Climate Change: Substantive Issues and Solutions.” The authors begin by depicting the issues with climate change more broadly, including highlighting the investment gap for energy transition and the cost involved in effective energy transition. The authors then set the scene for the focus of their chapter, namely, exploring how a substantive reform of investment treaties and Investor–State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) can support the global climate regime. The chapter proposes actionable pathways to recalibrate international investment law as a tool for climate governance. This is done by thoroughly analyzing the tension between international investment law and climate policies, culminating in ways to recalibrate the tension and make them align better. The authors rightly note and discuss the widespread perception that ISDS, with the current investment treaty landscape, contributes to an accountability gap in global climate governance; for example, by causing a ‘regulatory chill’ due to the alleged undercutting of states’ right to regulate for public good, including in order to combat climate change and redress environmental concerns. The authors then focus on the path forward by articulating that there are ample opportunities for a new generation of BITs and MITs, which incorporate language that, inter alia, narrows and refines the fair and equitable treatment standard, excludes non-discriminatory environmental measures from expropriation claims, and affirms the right to regulate. The chapter provides a rich account of the contemporary issues as well as the plentiful reform work that is being undertaken to realign the clash of policies to make international investment law and ISDS greener and indeed as a vehicle enabling energy transition. Notwithstanding this, the authors make the point that the reform must be all-encompassing, consistent, and holistic, i.e. the reforms cannot be piecemeal or isolated. Furthermore, there needs to be coordinated international action, indeed an urgent need for global coherence.

• openalex https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003536567-10first seen 2026-08-10 04:45:37