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Environmental Regulations And The Trans-Pacific Partnership: Using Investor-State Dispute Settlement To Strengthen Environmental Law, Ai-Li Chiong-Martinson

Seattle Journal of Environmental Law

The highly publicized Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement has reignited a long-running debate between environmentalists and free trade advocates about the impacts of the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system on the global economy and environmental preservation. The ISDS provision potentially gives foreign investors the right to challenge domestic regulations intending to protect the environment if those regulations discriminate against foreign investors and result in substantial monetary loss to the investors’ property. Critics of the TPP argue that we should learn from the troubling legacy of the North American Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which, according to critics, overwhelmingly favored investors over states …