The Responsible Investor’s Guide to Climate Change

Around the world, institutional investors – including pension funds, insurance companies, philanthropic endowments, and universities – are grappling with the question of whether to divest from oil, gas, and coal companies. The reason, of course, is climate change: unless fossil-fuel consumption is cut sharply – and phased out entirely by around 2070, in favor of zero-carbon energy such as solar power – the world will suffer unacceptable risks from human-induced global warming. How should responsible investors behave in the face of these unprecedented risks

Bilateral Investment Treaties and FDI Flows

Given that one of the principal purposes of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) is to help countries attract investment flows (by protecting investments), it is only natural that the question has been raised whether they do, in fact, lead to higher investment flows. The main studies on this topic from the past decade are collected in The Effect of Treaties on Foreign Direct Investment: Bilateral Investment Treaties, Double Taxation Treaties, and Investment Flows (Oxford University Press, 2009), a volume I edited with Karl P. Sauvant

Sustainable Development Goals: How Can the Mining Sector Contribute?

In September 2015, the heads of 193 United Nations (UN) Member States adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030. The agenda provides a successor framework to the Millennium Development Goals, which were adopted in 2000, with a view to ending poverty in all forms and dimensions, protecting the planet, and ensuring prosperity for all

Not So Fast

President Barack Obama and the Republican leadership in Congress are trying to pass fast track legislation in order to push through major economic agreements with eleven countries of the Pacific region (the Trans-Pacific Partnership) and Europe (the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) without the possibility for Congressional amendments. Both are being sold generally as trade agreements, yet they involve key areas of business law and regulation far beyond trade. Before Congress approves fast track, these agreements need to be made public and exposed to thorough public scrutiny

Investor-State Dispute Settlement, Public Interest and U.S. Domestic Law

As negotiations are ongoing in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement (TTIP), CCSI staff and Jeffrey Sachs discuss the implications of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) for domestic law and policy, focusing on effects within the US. The paper concludes that the risks ISDS poses for domestic law are significant and unjustified, and that there are preferable policy alternatives to pursue as a means of protecting the rights of investors operating overseas

TransCanada Lawsuit Highlights Need to Scuttle TPP

The Obama administration is still trying, against the odds, to push the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade and investment agreement (TPP) through the lame-duck session of Congress after the November presidential vote. The administration knows that TPP can’t pass before the election because both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump oppose it; therefore, they are hoping for a stealth Senate vote between the election and inauguration of the new president in 2017.We can therefore “thank” TransCanada for reminding us why the TPP needs to be scuttled

Why Fast Track Is a Dangerous Gift to Corporate Lobbies

The Obama Administration is now on track to get fast track legislation through the Senate, heading towards a close vote in the House. The end goal is to conclude two major business treaties: the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). The House Democrats are right to withhold their support until key treaty positions favored by the White House are dropped

Resource Resilience: How to Break the Commodities Cycle

The past year has seen dramatic declines in the prices of global commodities. Between June 2014 and the beginning of this year, crude oil prices fell by 50 percent to around $50 a barrel. Similarly, mineral prices have seen a drastic fall since the peak of the “commodity supercycle” in early 2011. Between then and April of this year, iron ore prices fell by 70 percent, coal prices by 54 percent and copper prices by 40 percent

Zambezi Valley Development Study

In June 2011, CCSI released a consultative draft report on Resource-Based Sustainable Development in the Lower Zambezi Basin, the result of a year-long inquiry into how the vast resource deposits in Tete province, combined with other major investments along the Nacala and Beira corridors, can be the basis for sustainable, equitable and inclusive growth in the Lower Zambezi Basin. The report recommends a framework of actions by Mozambique and its public and private partners to ensure that Mozambique reaps a major boost to economic development from its vast resource endowments, while also respecting the profitability of private-sector investments in these important projects. In short, the report aims for a “win-win” arrangement in which all stakeholders, public and private, derive benefits from the mining sector in Tete Province. The consultative draft was presented in Mozambique in June 2011, to serve as the basis for discussion, comment, and engagement with the range of stakeholders- government, private sector, development partners, regional banks, and civil society. Comments are welcome on the report. CCSI looks forward to working with stakeholders in the region on implementation

Openness in Extraction

More than a decade before becoming President of the United States, Herbert Hoover, a mining engineer, observed that, among the branches of property law, the distribution of mining rights most elegantly reflects the vicissitudes of social and political relations. According to Hoover, mining rights were a never-ending contention, as old as economic and civil conflict, among four principle classes – overlord, state, landowner, and miner. Somebody, he concluded, has to keep peace and settle disputes. Today, with the prices of major natural-resource commodities – including oil, coal, copper, gold, and iron ore – doubling, tripling, or rising even faster, the extractive industries are rapidly expanding. Profitable investments in the sector could lift millions of people out of poverty in the developing world