MULTILATERALISM AND THE INTEGRATION OF THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS INTO INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENT LAW

This thesis explores whether multilateralism can be feasibly utilized in efforts to integrate the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into International Investment Law (IIL). IIL—which comprises International Investment Agreements and Investor-State Dispute Settlement—is potentially beneficial to sustainable development, and as far as sustainable development is concerned, the SDGs represent its tangible manifestations. However, this benefit potential is only realizable if certain elements are in place within the IIL framework. In its current state, IIL does not substantially promote the attainment of the SDGs and risks inhibiting their achievement. Therefore, IIL needs reforms to align with the SDGs. According to its proponents, particularly the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, a multilateral investment treaty is the most efficient way to achieve these reforms. The rationale is that if such were to be successful, it is the most straightforward, all-encompassing, and once-for-all means of addressing the inconsistencies, overlaps, and development challenges that are distinctive features of the regime. To be truly reformative, such multilateral investment treaty must be successful—that is, accepted by most states worldwide—and effective (able to bring about the change sought). This thesis, therefore, first considers the prospects of the success of a multilateral reform effort and thereafter examines the components of a potentially effective SDG-integrating multilateral investment instrument. The research undertaken by this thesis reveals that certain factors and their embodying elements that need to be present in the investment regime to ensure both success and effectiveness are not currently prevalent in the investment regime, and it is unlikely that they will be in the near future. At the core of these factors is the need for consensus on the utilization of IIL for sustainable development rather than purely economic objectives. In addition, multilateralism has not historically enjoyed much success in IIL as in other areas of international law, and some of the reasons for this, as discussed in the thesis, are rooted in the aforementioned absence of consensus on considerations of matters related to sustainable development in the framing of the constituent elements of IIL. Therefore, this thesis concludes that the use of multilateralism to integrate the SDGs into IIL is currently infeasible, and as such, alternative means of integrating the SDGs into the regime must be considered

Rights by Design: Mainstreaming Human Rights Information, Education and Culture

‘Rights by Design: Mainstreaming Human Rights Information, Education and Culture’ explores the numinosity of human rights; that is, the intrinsic relationship between an individual and their rights. It is a timely reminder, in the post-Covid era of fragility, reflection, reckoning, and reawakening, that human beings are at the heart of human rights. The state-centricity of human rights discourse is increasingly giving way to and making room for authentic, post-colonial, localised voices in civil society and at grassroots, ‘glocal’ community levels, empowering the individual with the unprecedented but thus far largely unrealised power to shape a human rights future. In this future, human rights can – consciously and by design – be protected, respected, and rigorously defended from the creeping digital, ideological and political authoritarianism that is destabilising democracy and the international rules-based order on every continent in the world. To realise this power, we as individuals must be empowered with the information, knowledge, and advocacy skills to respect, protect, defend, and consciously live by human rights values in our everyday lives. In an ‘Age of Alternative Facts’, we must be equipped to counter human rights misinformation in our infospheres and reverse the global ‘information deficit’ on what human rights are and who they were designed to protect. This thesis is a call to action and a framework for empowering the individual so that we may more meaningfully integrate human rights knowledge, principles and values in our everyday social, economic and cultural lives – at home, in our family lives, and our local communities; through every stage of education, from early years, primary and secondary to tertiary, postgraduate, vocational and lifelong learning; in our digital worlds and social information environments; and in our worlds of work. It is an ambitious and original imagining of what Eleanor Roosevelt meant when she said, in 1958 on the 10th anniversary of the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that human rights begin in “small places, close to home ... [in] the world of the individual person"

Argon Mobility in the Mid-Lower Continental Crust: Insights from the Agly Massif and El Hoyazo

The 'Missing Argon Paradox' refers to the idea that a 'missing' argon reservoir exists in Earth's interior, which is based on a discrepancy between the expected and observed amounts of 40Ar in Earth's atmosphere. Mass balance calculations suggest that nearly half of the 40Ar produced over Earth's 4.56-billion-year history is unaccounted for. It is assumed that the upper mantle and crust contain only a fraction of this missing argon due to efficient degassing over geological time. However, this assumption remains largely untested. This thesis investigates the efficiency of radiogenic argon degassing from deep crustal rocks during both slow (tectonic) and rapid (volcanic) exhumation processes and evaluates whether argon concentrations in the deep continental crust have been underestimated. High-grade metamorphic rocks from two settings – the Agly Massif in southern France and the El Hoyazo dacite dome in southern Spain – were analysed using a combination of 40Ar/39Ar dating, high-resolution petrography, and various geochemical techniques. The results suggest that the 40Ar/39Ar geochronological record of the Agly Massif was reset during exhumation, with argon degassing facilitated by deformation-induced fluid infiltration and transport. Similar resetting of the 40Ar/39Ar records in other metamorphic terranes indicates that tectonic exhumation readily facilitates 40Ar degassing from the continental crust. In contrast, xenoliths from El Hoyazo contain significant amounts of excess argon, suggesting inefficient degassing from the deep crust in the absence of structural pathways, and potentially leading to elevated argon pressures in magmas and fluids. These findings imply that radiogenic argon may be more abundant in stable continental crust than current mass balance models suggest. Overall, this thesis highlights the need for further exploration into the distribution and behaviour of argon in Earth's crust. Such studies are critical for resolving the mass balance of argon reservoirs in Earth's interior and addressing the Missing Argon Paradox

Redefining Global Governance

This open access volume offers a unique interdisciplinary analysis of the current structure of global governance on tax, trade, and investment. It explores the interplay between actors, critiques current norm-making procedures, and proposes concrete solutions for improvement. It considers the impact of global governance in local contexts in Asia, Europe, and Africa, and includes perspectives from scholars based in these continents. It takes a comparative approach that goes beyond a siloed perspective to undertaking comparisons between the ways in which similar problems have been addressed in different areas---making the contributions highly relevant to scholars and policymakers worldwide. The volume includes case studies and provides concrete suggestions for improving global governance of tax, trade, and investment. This highly topical open access volume is of interest to a global readership in the fields of international law and taxation, globalization, international relations, and international trade economics

Rage against the regime: Policy responses to international investment arbitration

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. August 2019. Major: Political Science. Advisors: Ronald Krebs, John Freeman. 1 computer file (PDF); xv, 454 pages.Common in political discourse and academic literature is the notion that the international investment regime is experiencing backlash. At the center of this backlash is the belief that international investment treaties unduly restrain states’ ability to regulate in the public interest, most notably by allowing foreign investors to file international arbitration claims directly against governments for a variety of regulatory acts. The rise of investment arbitration--also know as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS)--has provoked a regime-wide reassertion of states' autonomy to regulate foreign investment under investment treaties. However, states have embarked on this process in different ways and to different extents. While some have become more cautious of how much legal autonomy they sacrifice in the future, others have partially or completely recovered autonomy lost to previous treaties. My dissertation explains why states pursue different policies in the aftermath of ISDS. I argue that negative ISDS experiences are filtered through ideational lenses that incline policy-makers to reclaim more or less legal autonomy. Yet policy-makers face constraints and opportunities when acting on these emerging preferences. Thus, I also argue that policy outcomes depend on the combination of a domestic and external variables. Most scholarly attention has been placed on the political behavior of economic actors, either domestic firms or foreign investors. However, ISDS disputes also affect a broad and diverse ensemble of local and transnational civil society groups. These actors have competing interests regarding continuity and change in investment treaty policies. Thus, I examine the conditions under which their mobilization can enhance or hinder policy-makers' ability to implement their desired policies. I test the expectations derived from this argument using a mixed methods research design that combines quantitative statistical analysis and qualitative case studies. Through regression analysis of an original measure of international legal autonomy, I show that after ISDS claims hit, states are less willing to sacrifice their legal autonomy and in some cases start to recover it. Further analysis of three original datasets of treaty signature, treaty content and treaty termination shows these actions are not equally likely across states. Through within- and cross-case comparisons of investment treaty policy-making in the United States, Ecuador and India, I show how alternative combinations of the explanatory variables make a given policy reaction to ISDS more likely. Whether states continue to endorse strong treaty protections is a pressing question, given the recent rise in the number of governments elected on nationalist platforms. There are also normative stakes in the answers to these research questions. Policy variation does not simply revolve around technical legal disagreements; it reflects fundamental disagreements about the limits of state authority in a globalized economy

Serpentinite emplacement and deformation in western Puerto Rico and their implications for the Caribbean North America plate boundary tectonic history

Serpentinite emplacement in southwestern Puerto Rico indicates a complex plate boundary history between the Caribbean and North America plates. In this study we investigate the kinematics of shear planes within the serpentinite to improve constraints on the tectonic evolution of the region. Shear planes collected within the Monte del Estado and Río Guanajibo serpentinites reveal two predominant groups. One group comprises northwesterly-striking thrust faults and easterly-striking left-lateral faults. A second group comprises northwesterly-striking right-lateral faults and easterly-striking thrust faults. These shear zones reveal two shortening directions that trend NE-SW and N-S. The N-directed shortening is interpreted be older and subsequent stress reactivated the shear planes. The SW-directed shortening is attributed to transpression that caused contraction, uplift, and left-lateral shearing of serpentinite. A subsidiary younger group comprising fewer faults consists of northerly-directed thrusts and northwesterly-directed left-lateral faults and may be related to the last transpressional deformation within Puerto Rico.Thin-section observations show that porphyroclastic peridotite with pyroxenes that are kinked, show deformation lamellae, undulose extinction, and define foliation and lineation. Olivine shows a granuloblastic texture, and many crystals are strain-free and show polygonization indicating recrystallization. These textures indicate high temperature deformation that formed prior to serpentinization. Crystal-plastic deformation, recorded by serpentine mylonite and serpentine veins, was followed by brittle faulting. These structures demonstrate that the serpentinite was deformed and uplifted by tectonic stresses at the Caribbean-North America plate boundary zone and not by diapirism as a result of buoyancy differences within the crust.In southwestern Puerto Rico serpentinite emplacement has been described as first by collisional processes and second by diapirism. Structure mapping of the Monte del Estado and Río Guanajibo serpentinite bodies indicate that serpentinite was emplaced by thrusts verging towards the southwest in early Tertiary time. The thrust faults are mostly blind and produced fault-propagation folds in the overlying Late Cretaceous and Tertiary volcano-sedimentary cover. Low-angle thrusts are exposed in places at the southern contact of the Monte del Estado and Río Guanajibo serpentinite bodies and are interpreted to form part of the transpression that occurred in middle Tertiary at the boundary of the Caribbean-North America plates