Digital Commons Network^™

Agricultural Investments Under International Investment Law, Jesse Coleman, Sarah Brewin, Thierry Berger

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

International investment law, based primarily on international investment treaties, plays an important role in the governance of investment in agriculture, forestry, and fishing. The obligations established by these treaties, and enforced by means of investor–state arbitration, can present challenges for policy-makers and others seeking to ensure that investments are sustainable, including by affecting the ways in which the costs and benefits of investments are distributed among different actors.

CCSI partnered with the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) to produce a briefing note on agricultural investments under international investment law. The …

The Snap Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Debate: Restrictingpurchases To Improve Health Outcomes Of Low-Incomeamericans, Nicole E. Negowetti

Journal of Food Law & Policy

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is a highly effective government program that reduces poverty and improves food security for millions of our country’s most vulnerable families. Amid threats of budget cuts to this critical program in the 2018 Farm Bill, advocates representing various interests have banded together in support of this vital program. However, the issue of restricting the purchase of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) with SNAP benefits has divided anti-hunger and public health advocates. While public health and medical officials support the idea of restrictions on junk food, arguing that SNAP should improve health and nutrition, not contribute to …

Gmos, International Law And Indigenous Peoples, Casandia Bellevue

Pace International Law Review

This Article sprung from a desire to discover why—despite scientific uncertainty and the oft-cited precautionary principle in international law—genetically modified organisms are still allowed to spread via international trade and natural ecological cycles. While exploring this topic, it did not take long to come across the environmental justice impacts of genetically modified crops, and their particularly disparate impact upon indigenous peoples across the globe. Not only are GMOs threatening biodiversity and our planet, but also the very existence and cultural foundations of many indigenous groups.

This Article seeks to answer the following questions: What are the international agreements that can …

Eating Is Not Political Action, Joshua Galperin, Graham Downey, D. Lee Miller

Journal of Food Law & Policy

To create policy at the interface of the centrally important and overlapping American ideals of agriculture and the environment, there are two options. Passive governance fosters markets in which participants make individual choices that aggregate into inadvertent collective action. In contrast, assertive governance allows the public, mediated through elected officials, to enact intentional, goal-oriented policy. This essay contends that the latter option, assertive governance, is the only appropriate means of creating harmony between agriculture and the environment it depends upon.