To address the climate crisis, governments need to limit new fossil fuel developments. But foreign investors are often protected under trade and investment agreements.
Palmer sued Western Australia’s government in the High Court and lost. But an obscure clause in a little-known trade agreement is giving him a second chance
Fossil fuel investors can use an obscure legal mechanism found in many international trade agreements to sue countries if their projects are blocked.
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A transcript of an episode of The Conversation Weekly published on October 6, 2022.
Fossil fuel investors can use an obscure legal mechanism found in many international trade agreements to sue countries if their projects are blocked.
curraheeshutter via Shutterstock
Experts are concerned that a legal mechanism called investor-state dispute settlement could affect countries’ moves to cut fossil fuel emissions. Listen to The Conversation Weekly.
Australia won’t release the text until after it is signed.
Then-president of Mexico Enrique Pena Nieto, U.S. President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sign the new Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The agreement was ratified in April 2020 and came into force last July.
The Canadian Press
The Canada-U.S.-Mexico Free Trade Agreement, which came into force in July 2020, puts more emphasis on the environment and gives greater authority in Canada in the matter.
Investor State Dispute Settlement Procedures open the prospect of legal cases it would cost Australia millions to defend.
India’s prime minister Narendra Modi is the only leader not to agree to sign up to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.
AAP Image/Mick Tsikas
The biggest barrier to Australia and much of the rest of the world signing up to the world’s biggest trading bloc appears to have been removed.
A Pakistani man walks past a shop that was closed due to a recent strike in Peshawar, Pakistan. Hundreds of thousands of Pakistani businesses went on strike in a nationwide protest against an increased sales tax, which opposition political parties said was imposed as part of the International Monetary Fund’s recent $6 billion bailout package for Islamabad.
(AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad)
Abolishing the secretive World Bank Tribunal known as the ISDS won’t solve all of the problems of global economic governance. But it seems a very good place to start.
Then Attorney-General Nicola Roxon and Health Minister Tanya Plibersek after the High Court rejected the legal challenge by tobacco companies to plain packaging laws, August 15, 2012.
LUKAS COCH/AAP
Many provisions in the Trans-Pacific Partnership have been suspended after the United States pulled out. But there’s still much to debate about the regional free trade agreement.
Ronald Labonte, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa
NAFTA renegotiations may see provisions from the Trans-Pacific Partnership revive like zombies. We must remember their failures - on income inequality, labour and environmental protection.
The UK’s future trade deals will be subject to EU member state approval.
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Research Fellow, NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in the Social Determinants of Health Equity, School of Regulation and Global Governance, Australian National University