Rethinking Investment Treaties: Public consultation

There is a growing awareness of the need to reform investment treaties—so that international investment can be channelled toward the urgent economic, social, and environmental challenges facing the world, rather than serving narrow interests.

International, regional, and national reforms are ongoing. But to ensure these efforts deliver on their promise, we need to have a conversation about what functions investment treaties should serve and how to best design them to address the core policy challenges of today and tomorrow.

This is why IISD launched the project Rethinking Investment Treaties to propose transformative models that are fit for purpose. Following our 2024 paper, which set out a roadmap for this project, in June 2025, we launched a public consultation for investment policy-makers, experts, academics, civil society, investors, and campaigners on how to rethink treaties.

We published the findings from the consultation in a summary report in March 2026. The consultation suggests that investment treaties should be redesigned to focus more on ensuring investments deliver genuine public goods—which is not the case with the current model focused on shielding foreign investors—and to better interact with national laws for settling disputes between investors and states.