International investment agreements and arbitration have significant roles for sustainable development. However, there is wide scepticism about the approach currently reflected in the existing agreements. Konrad von Moltke, Partner at Ecologic, together with colleagues at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), developed a Model Agreement on Investment.

The draft Model Agreement reflects a number of new approaches to this type of agreement:

• It recognizes that an investment agreement is fundamentally about good governance, and that protection of investor rights and obligations and host state rights and obligations are an essential part of that equation;
• It applies basic standards of good governance to the international agreement itself;
• It establishes a clear purpose or objective for the agreement: to create an approach to international investment that is expressly focused on, and thus supportive of, development aspirations for developing countries and the sustainable development requirements of the us all.
• Existing agreements focus only on investor rights.  We develop a clear set of provisions that seek to "balance" investor rights with investor obligations, and with host state rights and obligations, and home state rights and obligations;
• It sets out specific proposals to fix what we believe is currently a broken investor-state arbitration system;
• The text confronts the "home state of convenience" issue, and other issues that relate to a balance between domestic dispute settlement and international arbitration;

It includes an approach to investor obligations that seeks to strike a novel balance between voluntary and binding elements by linking dispute settlement to corporate performance; and investor conduct to investor liability.

For further information please visit IISD's website

Further links:
Ecologic project: Concerted Action Trade and Environment (CAT-E)