Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of abbreviations
- Preface
- PART I Climate change mitigation: scientific, political and international and trade law perspectives
- PART II Climate change mitigation and trade in goods
- PART III Trade in renewable energy sources
- PART IV Climate change mitigation and trade in services
- PART V Climate change and technology transfer, investment and government procurement: legal issues
- 14 International transfer of technologies: recent developments in the climate change context
- 15 TRIMS and the Clean Development Mechanism — potential conflicts
- 16 Balancing investors' interests and global policy objectives in a carbon constrained world: the interface of international economic law with the Clean Development Mechanism
- 17 Procurement policies, Kyoto compliance and the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement: the case of the EU green electricity procurement and the PPMs debate
- 18 Procurement and the World Trade Organization: purchase power or pester power?
- PART VI Institutional challenges and the way forward
- Index
16 - Balancing investors' interests and global policy objectives in a carbon constrained world: the interface of international economic law with the Clean Development Mechanism
from PART V - Climate change and technology transfer, investment and government procurement: legal issues
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of abbreviations
- Preface
- PART I Climate change mitigation: scientific, political and international and trade law perspectives
- PART II Climate change mitigation and trade in goods
- PART III Trade in renewable energy sources
- PART IV Climate change mitigation and trade in services
- PART V Climate change and technology transfer, investment and government procurement: legal issues
- 14 International transfer of technologies: recent developments in the climate change context
- 15 TRIMS and the Clean Development Mechanism — potential conflicts
- 16 Balancing investors' interests and global policy objectives in a carbon constrained world: the interface of international economic law with the Clean Development Mechanism
- 17 Procurement policies, Kyoto compliance and the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement: the case of the EU green electricity procurement and the PPMs debate
- 18 Procurement and the World Trade Organization: purchase power or pester power?
- PART VI Institutional challenges and the way forward
- Index
Summary
As lawyers we are trained to spot issues with our clients' interests in mind. When I teamed up with Baumert and Dubash to assess the relationship between the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and international investment rules, I was working with the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), and my colleagues at the World Resources Institute were keeping an eye out for the interests of the climate system. We were concerned to alert policy-makers that, if they were not careful, putting in place rules that stepped up levels of protection for foreign investors without including environmentally based exceptions to these rules could threaten the effective operation of the CDM.
Our paper was written in the context of wider concerns about the environmental and social impact of international investment agreements (IIAs) in the form of a rapidly growing number of bilateral investment treaties and of bilateral and regional free trade agreements. Capital exporters, particularly the United States (US) and the European Union, were keen on maintaining the momentum and the stability of increasing levels of foreign direct investment (FDI) by using IIAs as a means of strengthening the rights of their investors and providing them with access to compulsory and binding international arbitration.
The Kyoto Protocol was an even more fragile instrument in 2001 than it is now; it had not yet entered into force and the CDM's detailed rules had not yet been agreed on.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- International Trade Regulation and the Mitigation of Climate ChangeWorld Trade Forum, pp. 319 - 327Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009