Legal Issues On Environmental Regulations In International Investment Treaty

In recent years,with the emergence of a series of concepts such as “sustainable development” and “green finance”,seeking environmental protection in economic development,considering environmental impact in investment decision-making has become one of the trends of contemporary investment.Reflected in international investment agreements,more and more investment agreement texts incorporate environmental protection-related provisions in their rules;the recent international investment arbitration cases reflect the importance of environmental protection issues in international investment.Under the influence of the concept of early investment liberalization,international investment agreements focus on protecting investor rights and promoting investment development in order to seek economic benefits.In this context,in this case,investors have used the relevant rules in the investment agreement to initiate arbitration against the host country,thereby affecting the host country's protection of its domestic public interest and the legitimate control of investors' investment behavior.In the context of international investment liberalization and globalization of environmental awareness,this paper explores the relationship between international investment and environmental protection and analyzes the field of international investment and the reasons for environmental protection.At the same time,this paper starts from the interactive influence of international investment and environmental protection,and interprets modern international investment agreements,such as NAFTA and USMCA agreements,to sort out the development trend of environmental terms in investment agreements.On this basis,combined with the arbitration practice related to environmental provisions,from the non-discrimination treatment,minimum treatment standards and indirect expropriation provisions in the current investment agreement,the current status of environmental protection issues in the text of the current investment agreement is analyzed.However,the current investment agreements signed by China have a large time span,a large number of texts,and significant gaps between the texts.In the text of investment agreements,environment protection is emphasized,and there are only a handful of texts with more mature environmental protection provisions.Therefore,based on China's current investment agreement,this paper proposes three suggestions for improving China's foreign investment agreement.First,add environmental protection goals to the preamble.Enhancing the purpose and the importance of environmental protection in international investment in the form of soft law.Second,improve the terms of treatment and the terms of expropriation in the investment agreement.There shall be environmental exception provisions in nondiscriminatory treatment,minimum treatment standards and expropriation clauses for reserving space for the host country's environmental regulation rights.Third,add special environmental provisions to the investment agreement.Further restricting the investment behavior of foreign investment in the host country by independent environmental exception clauses and non-waiver/derogation of environmental measures.