Big business is using secretive tribunals to sue governments for billions over decisions that shape our collective future. This mechanism is called Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS). From fossil fuel giants to mining corporations, vulture funds to Big Tech, ISDS is used again and again as a corporate weapon against the public interest. We need to get rid of this anti-democratic system once and for all.
Join the movement to end ISDS and sign the petition!
Why does this matter?
Fossil fuel giants, mining corporations and others are using secretive tribunals to sue governments for billions over decisions that go against them:
- Shell and ExxonMobil are suing the Dutch government after it finally listened to local communities and closed a gas field that was causing earthquakes
- A vulture fund is suing over the windfall tax after after energy prices spiked and Big Oil’s profits doubled in 2022
- Mining giant Rio Tinto threatened to sue the Serbian government and was able to force through a devastating lithium mine despite public protest
- A Swedish land grabber sued Tanzania for millions over a sugar plantation and held the Tanzanian government to ransom by seizing a plane
These tribunals give powerful corporations leverage against decisions made to help ordinary people during the cost of living crisis, protect homes, tackle the climate crisis and safeguard the natural environment.
This secretive tribunal system is formally known as ISDS (investor state dispute settlement) and it is written in to trade and investment treaties. Governments have already recognised that a big ISDS treaty, the Energy Charter Treaty, is incompatible with the Paris Climate Agreement. However ISDS is also included in a web of smaller treaties.
What can we do?
We need to get rid of this anti-democratic system once and for all.
The good news is that we’ve done it before. Fossil fuel companies have been using ISDS in the Energy Charter Treaty to block climate action. After thousands of us took action, many of our governments woke up to the risk and have been getting out of that treaty – we won!
Now we need to join together and tell our governments to close the loophole provided by the web of small treaties and get rid of ISDS completely.
This year the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels was held, and many governments, especially those of countries in the global south, said that ISDS is a barrier to climate action. But pushback from a few countries in the global north meant that agreement was not reached on this. However, it is a major step forward that governments are discussing this and it is an opportunity we must seize for governments to work together to end ISDS.
No false solutions!
The EU and some European governments have at times tried to make small changes to the way that ISDS works and claim that this will solve the problem. It won’t, because those tweaks leave the core of the system (allowing corporations to sue governments outside of national legal systems) unchanged. Therefore we refer to ‘all forms of ISDS’ to be clear that we also mean these other versions – which are called things like ICS (investment court system), MIC (multilateral investment court) or a ‘standing mechanism’.
