International Investment Law Reform under the Sustainable Development Goals: Conflict, Balance and Institutional Reconstruction

Abstract

In the context of a fundamental principle of international law for which sustainable development has been widely accepted, this paper studies the structural conflict between sustainable development goals and traditional international investment law. This paper focuses on the imbalance between investor protection and host country regulatory rights. Meanwhile, this paper analyzes the environmental, economic and institutional challenges brought by the current international investment treaties and investor dispute settlement mechanism. Through literature review and typical case analysis, this paper evaluates the practical progress of the international community in rule reconstruction, dispute settlement mechanism reform and regional coordination. The study shows that traditional investment rules often restrict host countries from implementing environmental and industrial policies in line with sustainable development goals, and, points out that institutional reconstruction should be promoted from three ways: strengthening host countries' regulatory rights, reforming Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism and optimizing performance requirements, so as to provide support for building a more equitable and sustainable international investment governance system.