LCIL Friday Lecture: 'Oil and water: The inherent incompatibility of international investment law with climate action' - Dr Anil Yilmaz Vastardis, Essex Law School

Lecture Summary: The survival of our planet requires swift and targeted climate policies to adapt, mitigate and repair. Scientists and political elites acknowledge the urgency to reduce our reliance on coal and fossil fuels to achieve the necessary reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Academics have been studying the impacts of investment treaty protections on climate action and argued that investment treaties raise the cost of climate action, financially and via regulatory chill and limit their ability to combat climate change. There also have been instances where investment treaties protected investors in the renewable energy sector leading to the argument that international investment law can support transition to renewable energy. This lecture will reflect on the compatibility of states’ existing investment treaty obligations with their climate obligations. It will consider the consequences of investment law’s distaste of local politics, stakeholder participation and public protest, which are essential to the realization of the right to a healthy environment, climate policy-making, and more broadly to democratic governance.

Anil is a Senior Lecturer at Essex Law School and a co-director of the Essex Business and Human Rights Project. Her research interests are in the fields of international investment law and business and human rights. Her research bridges the gap between corporate law, international investment law, human rights law, and tort law, examining how these areas can and should interact to operationalise human rights standards in the modern business context. She has published works on parent-subsidiary relationships in the business and human rights context, non-financial reporting, duty of care in supply chain relationships, human rights in investment contracts and the embedded inequalities in the investment treaty regime. She is the author of The Nationality of Corporate Investors under International Investment Law (2020, Hart Publishing), a member of the IEL Collective’s steering committee and a member of Teaching Business and Human Rights Forum’s governance committee.