This brochure highlights IISD's Sustainable Asset Valuation (SAVi) Tool, which helps governments assess the finanical impact of climate and other environmental, social, economic and governance risks on infrastructure.

Most-favoured nation (MFN) is now a both common and controversial clause in investment treaties. It has been the object of differing and unexpected interpretations by treaty-based arbitral tribunals. 

Initially, the application of MFN in investment treaties did not raise much debate. Since 2000, however, with Maffezini v. Spain, an original interpretation of MFN led to a seismic shift in international investment law: the possibility for investors protected under a bilateral investment treaty (BIT) to import more favourable provisions from a third-party BIT made by their host state. This trend then accelerated and led to many criticisms, crystallized in one essential point: the latitude given to foreign investors to bring together elements from various treaties made by the host state and to custom tailor a treaty, ignoring the bilateral character of the commitments made by two states in the context of specific negotiations. 

The controversies around MFN raise fundamental questions in the context of current changes in the international investment law and arbitration regime. They require an examination of the content and scope of this clause in order to find solutions that strike a better balance of the rights and obligations involved without compromising current reforms towards a more balanced regime that is a vector of sustainable development. 

After reviewing the definition and background of the MFN clause, this study conducts a typology of investment treaties and then an analysis of the differing interpretations by the tribunals of several key issues. The issues surrounding certain interpretations of the MFN clause and the reactions of states in their recent treaties are reviewed in order to draw lessons for states.

The customary international law rule of exhaustion of local remedies (ELR) aims at safeguarding state sovereignty by requiring individuals to seek redress for any harm allegedly caused by a state within its domestic legal system before pursuing international proceedings against that state.

In international investment law, this rule has in large part been dispensed with, as states conclude investment treaties and chapters under which they give advance consent to international arbitration with foreign investors—a practice that was understood to mean that the investor could initiate a claim without prior recourse to the host state’s administrative or judicial courts. Even under treaties lacking an explicit or implicit waiver of the exhaustion rule, arbitral tribunals—ruling on their own jurisdiction—have generally allowed foreign investors to bypass local remedies.

In recent years, several states have reintroduced a mandatory requirement to pursue or exhaust local remedies for the settlement of investment disputes in their investment treaties. This practice is meant to empower domestic legal systems and avoid their bypassing. Other states are considering a similar path.

In this advisory bulletin, part of IISD’s Best Practices Series, we review state-of-the-art options and approaches to the ELR requirement in international investment law. Beginning with a background section, we define the scope of the paper, review the customary international law origins of the ELR rule and review how it was adapted to and developed in the context of international human rights law.Turning then to international investment law, we examine treaty practice and case law on requiring ELR before initiating international arbitration.Based on the lessons learned from treaty practice and jurisprudence, we conclude by outlining policy options for ELR in international investment law.

This guidance note is designed for country teams and other stakeholders interested in strengthening vertical integration in National Adaptation Plan (NAP) processes.

In the context of the NAP process, vertical integration is the process of creating intentional and strategic linkages between national and sub-national adaptation planning, implementation and monitoring & evaluation (M&E).  Recognizing the key role played by sub-national authorities and local organizations in advancing adaptation to climate change, the document outlines the key issues and questions to consider to facilitate vertical integration throughout the NAP process. Practical case examples are provided to illustrate the issues. The guidance note presents a flexible approach that can be adapted to the country’s context, capacities and resources available.

The 22nd session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 22) to the UNFCCC takes place from 7-18 November 2016.

During the conference, parties will, among other things, begin operationalizing the Paris climate change agreement. Our experts will be on the ground providing daily coverage of the negotiations, publishing targeted research, and convening events. IISD is also providing technical and policy support to this year’s COP Presidency, Morocco.

Many different types of “waste” or under-used plant materials can be turned into value-added bioenergy fuel products.

This brochure, available in both English and French, focuses on such materials available in Manitoba, Canada, including agricultural residues, forestry residues, grassland plants and wetland plants. In particular, it outlines some of the fuel products IISD has developed with partners: fuel pellets, briquettes, cubes, biochar, biogas and fuel logs. It also discusses current market conditions, existing and potential users, socioeconomic and environmental benefits of this approach, and total biomass availability estimates for the province.

IISD analysis has shown that some of these non-traditional fuel options have advantages over traditional sources, including higher yield per hectare, faster maturity, comparable or better heating values and water quality benefits when nutrients are captured in harvested plant materials. An estimated 1 million gross tonnes of biomass residues and cattail can be found within 100 kilometres of both Winnipeg or Brandon, presenting an opportunity for further growth of these low-carbon fuel sources in Manitoba.

Healthy ecosystems and Protected Areas (PAs) play a key role in reducing climate risks and helping to enhance the resilience of people to both climate and non-climate hazards.

At the same time, communities’ dependence on ecosystems and PAs for essential aspects of their livelihoods—such as drinking water, food, energy and other income-generating activities—can make them vulnerable to changing climatic and environmental conditions.

CRiSTAL Parks is a tool developed for conservation practitioners, including project planners and managers and PA managers, to integrate climate risks into conservation planning, identify the potential of PAs or conservation zones to reduce those risks and develop tailored climate change adaptation measures.

CRiSTAL Parks builds on the previous Community-based Risk Screening Tool – Adaptation and Livelihoods (CRiSTAL) tool to focus more explicitly on the links between human communities and conservation areas to understand how this relationship creates vulnerabilities or supports the adaptive capacity of both people and ecosystems to the potential impacts of climate change.

For more information about the CRiSTAL project-planning tool and its specialized versions, please visit: https://www.iisd.org/cristaltool/  

Integrating existing and potential migration concerns into conservation interventions is increasingly important in many parts of the world.

Many critical ecosystems are already experiencing myriad forms of natural resource and climate stress, and the growing socio-environmental impacts of migration could exacerbate or reinforce existing social tensions and institutional failures, further threatening the critical ecosystems and the livelihoods they support. Policy-makers and practitioners are not fully aware of these threats, nor are they fully prepared to manage them through appropriate interventions.

The Migration and Conservation Toolkit was developed to help conservation practitioners assess the impacts of human migration on critical ecosystems. It draws on extensive research in three critical ecosystems in the Great Lakes region of Africa with generous funding from the MacArthur Foundation.

The toolkit is intended as a roadmap to guide users toward a better understanding of migration dynamics and impacts, an understanding they can then use to better protect ecosystems. It is not prescriptive, but instead aims to help practitioners design and implement activities that are sensitive to the dynamics and impacts of existing and potential human migration on livelihoods and natural resource use, and that address the consequent impacts on ecosystems and biodiversity in host communities.

This guidebook is intended for decision makers and technical advisors involved in the development of national monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems for adaptation, particularly in developing and middle-income countries.

Its objective is to guide decision making regarding the purpose, design, operationalization, and use of results of an appropriate system for national M&E of adaptation. Given its close linkages with the broader development and M&E context in a given country, the guidebook recognizes that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to national M&E of adaptation: Experience shows that decision makers in different countries have chosen very different approaches depending on the specific context.

This guidebook therefore leads the reader through a series of questions for consideration, responses to which will provide a basis for identifying practical steps towards the adoption of a national adaptation M&E system that best suits a given country. These questions for consideration are divided into four interrelated building blocks related to understanding the context of the M&E system, identifying the content to monitor, designing a process for operationalization, and deciding how to present results through products that will respond to the purpose of the M&E system.

IISD Experimental Lakes Area (IISD-ELA) brings a 47 year (1969–present) history of monitoring climate, water quality and fisheries in a unique whole-ecosystem laboratory setting.

Now, as a part of IISD, it has the opportunity to use its long-term monitoring dataset to examine how climate change is affecting boreal forests, wetlands and lakes from a consistent, long-term, whole-ecosystem dataset of significant scientific and societal value.

This brochure presents some of IISD-ELA's major climate change research findings, so you can see the data for yourself and understand how climate change is affecting our lakes.