The Conflict between Environmental Protection and Investment Protection in Host Country and the Optimal Path of the Regulation

DOI

10.2991/aebmr.k.220405.147How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Responsibility; obligation; status; the optimal path

Abstract

This article will focus on the protection of environmental issues in international investment agreements. In today’s society, environmental disputes between foreign investors and host countries continue to be submitted to arbitration on the basis of international investment agreements. The exploration of the public interests of host countries and the specification of investors’ rights and obligations have always been important topics of international discussion. The author will discuss existing international adjudication disputes arising from environmental enforcement and performance of responsibilities. It is found that there is always an imbalance between the investment protection required by investors and the environmental protection of the host country, and the arbitral tribunal is often difficult to come up with convincing results due to transparency and vague division of responsibilities in international agreements. This result will have a negative impact on foreign investors and the host country and affect the environmental policies of the host country in the long run. Then this paper makes a detailed analysis of the reasons for the formation of the problem, which is discussed from three aspects including the difficulty to define environmental responsibility, inconsistent status between countries, and the need to update the concept and judicial mechanism. After that, some suggestions for improvement can be put forward by exploring the causes of the problems and drawing lessons from the international law. In terms of procedure, the arbitral tribunal should increase the appeal means of counterclaim, which can effectively rebalance the procedure. In terms of the agreement, a clear division of rights and standard wording is needed, their discretion will be limited and unnecessary disputes should be resolved in a way that avoids vague definitions. From a substantive point of view, IIA’s theory should be updated to include environmental issues neglected in international investment treaties.

Copyright

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press International B.V.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Shijie Li
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/04/29
TI  - The Conflict between Environmental Protection and Investment Protection in Host Country and the Optimal Path of the Regulation
BT  - Proceedings of the 2022 7th International Conference on Social Sciences and Economic Development (ICSSED 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 876
EP  - 881
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/aebmr.k.220405.147
DO  - 10.2991/aebmr.k.220405.147
ID  - Li2022
ER  -