Investment for Sustainable Development
Sustainable development is an investment issue. Capital is needed to alleviate poverty, create jobs, accelerate the clean energy transition and allow for the development of much-needed infrastructure to provide goods and services for all. Foreign direct investment (FDI) is an important source of that capital.
But investment does not come without risks. How can we ensure investments are made responsibly, without harming people, the environment or the local economy?
IISD works with governments and civil society to develop and improve legal and policy tools focusing on the critical linkage between investment and sustainable development. We look for and provide new approaches to ensure that investment law and policy advance environmentally sound investment that generates broad socioeconomic benefits. In particular, IISD experts examine how the rules and institutions that govern international investment flows can be improved to benefit developing countries.
- Best Practices
Best Practices: Definition of Investor
This paper looks at the criteria defining the range of protection granted to investors, and particularly at the role the nationality of an investor can play in investor-state arbitration.
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Recent Developments in International Investment Disputes: Investment treaty cases from September 2010 to October 2011
This brief was prepared for the Fifth Annual Forum of Developing Country Investment Negotiators, organized by the International Institute for...
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Best Practices: Indirect Expropriation
This paper focuses on the definition of indirect expropriation in international investment law and aims to identify a set of criteria to overcome the existing issue of consistency and foreseeability while helping to provide a clear definition of the concept of indirect expropriation.
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Commentary to the Austrian Model Investment Treaty
The commentary examines the Austrian Model Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) and compares recent developments in the use of BIT models in North...
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Countries Continue to Pursue Efforts to Increase Transparency in Investor-state Dispute Settlement
In New York last week, a large number of countries, both developed and developing, strongly supported concrete options to ensure transparency in...
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Report on the Fifth Annual Forum of Developing Country Investment Negotiators - Investment and Sustainable Development: Developing Country Choices for a Better Future - October 17-19, 2011 - Kampala, Uganda
This is a meeting report of the Fifth Annual Forum of Developing Country Investment Negotiators, which was co-hosted by the Government of Uganda,...
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A Critical Opportunity for Transparency in Investor-State Disputes as Government Delegations and Arbitration Experts Meet in New York
Country delegations to the United Nations have a critical opportunity to bring much-needed transparency to international arbitrations between...
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India's Many Investment Treaties Make it Vulnerable
Nathalie Bernasconi-Osterwalder has written extensively on the dangers of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and free trade agreements (FTAs)...
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Investment Treaty News Quarterly, Volume 2, Issue 2, December 2011/January 2012
In this issue:Mission Creep: International Investment Agreements and Sovereign Debt Restructuring; UNASUR Arbitration Centre: The Present Situation...
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Investment Treaties and Why They Matter to Sustainable Development: Questions and answers
This handbook focuses on international treaties that guarantee standards of treatment for foreign investors.Today, there are literally thousands of...
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