Investment treaties: can we save the baby from the bathwater?

Canberra Skeptics proudly presents:

Date: Tuesday, 20 September 2022

Time: 6:00 to 7:00pm

Speaker: Emma Aisbett

Venue: Online

Registration essential

Link: https://my.demio.com/ref/vnmCqqyKMYKjip6b

Investment treaties have been a ubiquitous yet controversial element of international law since the 1990s. Whether stand-alone or embedded in comprehensive economic partnership agreements, these treaties aim to promote and protect foreign investment. They do so by providing substantive protections from adverse impacts of government actions and recourse to international dispute settlement. They have been widely criticised for hampering public good government action – particularly related to the environment, most recently climate mitigation. In this seminar, Emma Aisbett argues that reforming these treaties to focus them on their core business of solving time-inconsistency problems for host states is both necessary and possible.

Emma Aisbett is an Associate Professor at the ANU School of Law and Associate Director (Research) for the Zero-Carbon Energy for the Asia Pacific Grand Challenge at the Australian National University. She is one of the world’s leading interdisciplinary scholars on international investment agreements, with over 600 citations to publications in leading law, political science and economics journals. She has been invited to present to the OECD Freedom of Investment Roundtable and UNTAC High-level meetings on IIAs. Her collaboration with Jonathan Bonnitcha on investment treaties includes an influential submission to the Productivity Commission’s 2010 Review of Bilateral and Regional Trade Agreements and multiple journal publications. Their recent reform proposal was published in the Journal of International Economic Law (JIEL) and the Michigan Journal of International Law. It received the 2021 John. H Jackson Prize for the contribution to JIEL that most significantly breaks new ground and adds new insights to the study and understanding of international economic law. Both authors have explained the relevance of their proposal to climate policy reforms in submissions to the OECD.

Future of Investment Treaties consultation.

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Event announcements:

Meetup: http://meetu.ps/c/clpg/mmVvH/a

Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/o/canberra-skeptics-18628458762