Category:Environmental Laws

United States

(Updated: 2015)

The recent U.S. elections have produced a 'turn-back-the-clock caucus' in the US Congress. The resulting efforts to roll back environmental laws passed with success over the yrs will present a challenge to profound green progress. We should consider again the beginning of the green era in the U.S. and successive accomplishments in law and practice that clearly deserve to be built upon, not to be dismantled by retro-policies.

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Global/International

List of International Environmental Agreements

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Montreal Protocol - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol - Due to its widespread adoption and implementation it has been hailed as an example of exceptional international co-operation, with Kofi Annan quoted as saying that "perhaps the single most successful international agreement to date has been the Montreal Protocol" ... When comparing this very success story with attempts to establish an international policy on the Earth's climate or atomic energy, the entire process from a problem formulation to a global acceptance supported by a legal framework took less than a quarter of a single human generation live span.

Among the treaty's accomplishments are: The Montreal Protocol was the first international treaty to address a global environmental regulatory challenge; the first to embrace the "precautionary principle" in its design for science-based policymaking; the first treaty where independent experts on atmospheric science, environmental impacts, chemical technology, and economics, reported directly to Parties, without edit or censorship, functioning under norms of professionalism, peer review, and respect; the first to provide for national differences in responsibility and financial capacity to respond by establishing a multilateral fund for technology transfer; the first MEA with stringent reporting, trade, and binding chemical phase-out obligations for both developed and developing countries; and, the first treaty with a financial mechanism managed democratically by an Executive Board with equal representation by developed and developing countries.

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List of Environmental Law Suits

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Note: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor-state_dispute_settlement Investor-State Dispute Settlement / ISDS]

Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) is an instrument of public international law, that grants an investor the right to use dispute settlement proceedings against a foreign government. Provisions for ISDS are contained in a number of bilateral investment treaties, in certain international trade treaties, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (Chapter 11) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (Chapters 9 and 28). ISDS is also found in international investment agreements, such as the Energy Charter Treaty. If an investor from one country (the "Home State") invests in another country (the "Host State"), both of which have agreed to ISDS, and the Host State violates the rights granted to the investor under public international law, then that investor may bring the matter before an arbitral tribunal. So, for example, if after an investor has acquired the right to sell cigarettes in a Host State, the Home State imposes a heavy tax on cigarettes (because they are carcinogenic), then the investor sue for his losses: This is a great protection for corporate investment, and a recognition of the primacy of corporate profits.

"If you wanted to convince the public that international trade agreements are a way to let multinational companies get rich at the expense of ordinary people, this is what you would do: give foreign firms a special right to apply to a secretive tribunal of highly paid corporate lawyers for compensation whenever a government passes a law to, say, discourage smoking, protect the environment or prevent a nuclear catastrophe. Yet that is precisely what thousands of trade and investment treaties over the past half century have done, through a process known as 'investor-state dispute settlement', or ISDS."

— Via The Economist, October 2014

Note: In early January 2016, the TransCanada corporation announced it would initiate an ISDS claim under NAFTA against the United States, seeking $15 billion in damages and calling the denial of a permit for Keystone XL "arbitrary and unjustified."

January 2016 / News Via The Globe and Mail

See Also:

International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Centre_for_Settlement_of_Investment_Disputes

International Investment Agreement - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_investment_agreement

North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement

Tran-Pacific Partnership (TPP) - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_investment_agreement

Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Investment_Partnership

United Nations Commission on International Trade Law - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Commission_on_International_Trade_Law

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