The Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) is an outdated investment agreement originally created to enable energy sector cooperation after the Cold War. However, today, its inclusion of investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) is an obstacle to necessary climate action.
Fossil fuel investors have used the ECT to sue States over their climate measures, claiming a right to substantial economic compensation for alleged expenses or investment losses. Unless States curb investor access to arbitration in such “secret courts,” this trend is likely to intensify in the coming years as governments must take unprecedented steps to address the climate crisis. States could be squeezed from both sides: sued by communities for their climate inaction with ever greater frequency, and sued by investors under ISDS if and when they do act to phase out the fossil fuel drivers of the climate crisis and accelerate the energy transition.
CIEL has long worked to dismantle ISDS and ensure that the perspectives of communities inform ongoing arbitration. This year, CIEL worked tirelessly to educate European decision makers about the dangers of ISDS in the ECT, demonstrating how the treaty undermines effective climate action and is fundamentally incompatible with EU law. In an unprecedented win, the European Commission proposed a coordinated withdrawal of the EU and all of its Member States from the ECT. Now, we are leveraging this momentum for other States and clearing the way for effective climate action around the world.
If we are to keep global temperature rise below 1.5°C and avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change, by 2030 we must cut emissions in half – and eliminate them entirely by 2050.
How we define a problem determines how we identify its solutions. From its inception, the international climate negotiating platform — the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) — failed to acknowledge fossil fuels as the primary driver of the climate crisis. That glaring omission was no accident: Those profiting from business-as-usual have actively influenced the narrative, obscured facts, and manipulated information to perpetuate our reliance on fossil fuels.
If big polluters refuse to face up to the facts that fossil fuels are today’s weapons of mass destruction, and to urgently step up their actions to phase out all oil, gas, and coal — without loopholes or limitations — then they better lawyer up. They will be called to account not just in the court of public opinion, but in the courts of law. – Nikki Reisch
At the latest global climate talks in Egypt (COP27), CIEL and our partners succeeded in putting fossil fuels squarely on the agenda of the UNFCCC. But the fossil fuel industry has a new ploy to deflect attention from the urgent need to phase out oil, gas, and coal: “net zero.” Under the guise of carbon offsets, carbon capture, and geoengineering technologies, net zero creates a misleading diversion and promotes a dangerous distraction. It suggests that, instead of reducing emissions outright by stopping them at their source, we can manipulate the math.
The science is clear: We must cut global emissions in half by 2030. Carbon offsets and carbon removal technologies cannot replace real emissions reductions. Net zero greenwashing delays crucial climate action and places a burden on communities already bearing the brunt of the climate crisis. Last year, CIEL and partners helped secure key recommendations from a UN High-Level Expert Group, which affirmed that real zero emissions requires commitments to phase out and discontinue support for ALL fossil fuels — coal, oil, and gas.
The Right to a Healthy Environment & the Rights of Future Generations
In July, the United Nations awarded its highest human rights prize to the Global Coalition of civil society organizations, Indigenous Peoples, social movements, and local communities that led the successful campaign for “the universal recognition of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.” The prize is the culmination of decades of movement building, legal advocacy, and policy diplomacy that CIEL has fostered, supported, and when necessary, coordinated. Given once every five years, this award recognizes the coalition’s vital role in securing the UN General Assembly’s universal recognition of the right to a healthy environment in 2022. This is the first time the prize was awarded to a global coalition.
The historic recognition of this right is already informing legal precedent and advancing accountability around the globe. It is informing advisory proceedings of the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and the International Court of Justice that will guide decision making; drive accountability; and support people, communities, and movements demanding their rights to a safe climate and a livable future. And it is a touchtone for integrating human rights into the global plastics treaty negotiations.
In a moment of serendipity, we learned of the UN Human Rights Prize just days before the public launch of the Maastricht Principles on the rights of future generations. At the heart of these Principles is the recognition that protecting the rights of future generations means simply according to those who will follow us the same human rights that each of us already enjoy. It means recognizing that we must avoid discrimination not only within generations, but across them, and safeguarding against that discrimination in the decisions and actions we take today. This critical conceptual breakthrough has opened the door to a growing community of experts and practitioners who are embracing the Principles as a legal tool to advance their work.
The development of the Principles themselves, like the recognition of the right to a healthy environment before them, demanded years of painstaking groundwork — including research, consultations, and synthesis — that drew on the expertise and experience of more than 200 human rights and legal experts, social movement representatives, and regional convenings. In the short time since their release, the Principles have been incorporated into amicus briefs for lawsuits and legal bodies, and welcomed by governments, human rights organizations, and human rights mandate holders. The Principles have also been highlighted as a critical input for the UN’s upcoming Summit for the Future, which aims to create a process to define and protect the rights of future generations.
The Principles are significant not only for what they have accomplished in their first few months, but for what they reflect: the next step toward developing a more holistic legal system that acknowledges — as cultures and peoples around the world have long done — the profound interconnections between humans and the environment. They recognize that we only have one Earth to live on, and that we must live within its limits if we are to survive and thrive as a species.
Running throughout the Maastricht Principles on the rights of future generations is the recognition of the rights of Indigenous Peoples, the need to address intragenerational justice as a step to address intergenerational justice, and the importance of integrating progress from other areas of law, including the rights of nature. For that reason, the Maastricht Principles, alongside the right to a healthy environment, are helping lay foundations for the legal change that we seek — not just over the next few years, but for the coming decades. Because thinking on those timelines is how we change history.
