How Can Investment Law Be Reformed to Better Incorporate the SDGs and Promote Sustainable Economic Development?

Challenges to sustainable economic development have arisen in international investment. Foreign investment often poses sustainable development problems for host countries, sometimes even affecting social well-being and exacerbating poverty. The role of international investment law as influencing and regulating international investment behavior needs to be reformed and reinterpreted to accommodate the requirements of sustainable development and elimination of poverty. In the reform of international investment law, the interests of developing countries, which are among the most vulnerable to compensation, are particularly in need of protection. By analyzing three typical cases in the ICSID relating to the influence of treaties on domestic policy-making, the privilege of certain investors, and the interpretation of international investment law, this paper makes recommendations for international investment law reform, arguing that international investment agreements should allow more space to domestic policymaking, that sustainable development should be incorporated in its interpretation, and that the existing fragmented international investment law framework should be reformed, preferably by building an institution for a consensus towards the formulation of IIAs.