Stabilization

Investor Due Diligence and the Energy Charter Treaty

The Energy Charter Treaty modernization negotiations are due to begin later this year and a set of topics for parties to consider has already been announced. This piece examines the prospects for updating the ECT’s existing formulation of FET and analyzes how this standard has been interpreted in past arbitrations involving renewable energy disputes. The author argues in favour of including a requirement of investor due diligence as an attempt to help ensure that investors anticipate possible risks that may emerge from changes to a state’s regulatory framework.

Stabilization in investment contracts: Rethinking the context, reformulating the result

Over the past two decades, stabilization provisions in investment contracts (and in the domestic law in some developing countries) became a popular demand of investors into developing countries. Rarely used […]

Principles for responsible contracts: Integrating the management of human rights risks into State-investor contract negotiations

The UN shines a spotlight on business and human rights In July 2005, the then United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed John Ruggie as his Special Representative on Business and […]

Rethinking investor-state contracts through a sustainable development lens

In recent years, economic liberalisation, improved transport and communication systems, and the global demand for energy, minerals and agricultural commodities have fostered investment in agriculture, mining and petroleum projects in […]

Foreign investment contracts and sustainable development: The new foundations begin to emerge

Two international projects relating to foreign investment and sustainable development (SD) were completed in the past two months. These two projects individually and together show the emerging pathways to properly […]

Freezing government policy: Stabilization clauses in investment contracts

To a significant extent the site of debate about the terms of globalization and its relationship to the regulatory state has shifted from the World Trade Organization to the world of investment treaties and arbitration. Investment treaties typically confer on a foreign investor a right to sue a host state that has allegedly failed to comply with a number of substantive obligations, typical among them the requirement to compensate for expropriation, fair and equitable treatment, and national treatment.

A global thirst: How water is driving the new wave of foreign investment in farmland

It is no longer a secret that there is a new wave of foreign investment in farmland, predominantly in Africa. An explosion of media reports and a series of studies by the World Bank, Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), have confirmed the scale and consequences of this new influx of foreign investment. The World Bank report, by far the most comprehensive, found that reported deals amounted to 45 million hectares in 2009 alone.