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Abstract
Makane Moïse Mbengue engages a ‘conversation’ with Judge Weeramantry (who has been rather critical on the caution that the Court exercised with respect to the legal status of sustainable development), showing that despite the judicial restraint that has characterized the treatment of the issue, the Judgment of the Court paved the way for a more progressive judicial construction of sustainable development.
This article examines the question of whether the wto enjoys a monopoly over the settlement of trade disputes by examining the historical context of the Dispute Settlement Understanding of the wto, including early dispute resolution under the gatt and the goal behind the transformation leading to the wto of curbing potential unilateralism within the trade regime. It argues that this culminated in the intention to create a centralized rule-based system for the settlement of disputes, rather than an intention to create a monopoly for the wto. The article examines potential threats to the so-called monopoly, in particular with the proliferation of Regional Trade Agreements (rtas) and the development of Mutually Agreed Solutions (mas). It also addresses relevant case law to demonstrate that the wto does not and was not intended to enjoy a monopoly over trade disputes. Rather, the wto pursues the objective of strengthening the multilateral trading system rather than encouraging unilateral trade action, which would not appear to be undermined by resort to the dispute settlement mechanisms of relevant rtas or other dispute settlement mechanisms.
Abstract
The COVID-19 crisis offers an opportunity to shape new narratives of solidarity. Africa has been at the forefront of such revisited narratives on solidarity. The present contribution explores in particular the narrative developed by President Macky Sall of Senegal, highlighting its two facets: narrative on the crisis and narrative of the crisis.
This chapter argues that investment arbitration has undergone a transformation. Having been created with the original intended function of protecting foreign investors, it has been for a long time a forum where investors would bring investment (not environmental) claims, and even in those few instances where environmental issues were raised, tribunals would mostly discard them as irrelevant. More recently, however, it seems to have become a system that allows and ensures the compliance with and enforcement of environmental norms. To explain this transformation, it examines three main drivers of change: the use of environmental issues by the parties, the attitude of tribunals, and the introduction of environmental provisions in investment agreements.
In these concluding observations, the editors reflect on the challenges the international trade and investment regimes are currently facing in the context of energy, and which have emerged from the chapters of this book: accounting for the specificities of the energy sector and for the environmental and human rights impact of energy trade and investment activities. To address these challenges, this final chapter relies on the different chapters in the volume to set out three main approaches to bridge the gap between economic and non-economic considerations in the treatment of international energy trade and investment.