Mapping climate-related investment arbitrations

Recent years have seen increased attention on the impact that the global stock of over 3000 international investment agreements may play in disputes about the allocation of costs of the transition to net zero. The novelty of this area has raised concerns about the number of climate-relevant arbitrations under Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) systems, and the conceptual boundaries that could be used to determine which of these cases should be considered as part of the global body of “climate change litigation”. This paper updates and expands a preliminary mapping of climate-relevant arbitrations conducted by the authors in 2021. We conduct a comprehensive review of cases and classify these into a modified and improved version of the typology of cases initially developed. Case studies in each category are analysed and discussed alongside with reflections regarding the potential future growth and direction of litigation.