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This chapter examines the increasing number of international investment disputes where issues relating to environmental rights, sustainable development and foreign investment protection were inextricably intertwined, in order to determine whether arbitrators have approached such interrelationships by taking environmental and sustainable development principles into consideration. It identifies the status and relevance accorded to environmental principles and obligations, either of a customary or treaty nature, in investor-state disputes. The chapter's purpose is to shed into light the extent to which arbitrators are prepared to take into account the obligation of host states to protect the environment and their citizens' right to a healthy environment. The final part of the chapter focuses on the relationship between investment law and the exercise of environmental participatory rights (information, public participation, and access to justice in environmental matters) at the national level.

This chapter turns to the question of environment and democracy. It takes up two themes in environmental political thought: ecological citizenship and environmental democracy. Not only are these interrelated theoretical orientations advanced by environmental political theorists to counter the kinds of technocratic eco-authoritarianism discussed in the two previous chapters, they are presented as essential foundations of a sustainable way of life. The future of democratic governance in view of the climate crisis is thus seen to depend on the viability of the environmental democratic challenge. The discussion supports the premises of environmental democracy, but points to a pressing need to give more attention to the relationship of this theory to the realities of political power and the limited time frame now available for achieving such a challenging societal eco-transformation. The chapter approaches this through an examination of the literature on deliberative environmental democracy, ecological citizenship, citizen juries, and deliberative systems.

This chapter extends the preceding discussion about environmental democracy to the question of the “green state.” Debates about the possibility of green democratic states raise relevant issues for an assessment of democratic environmental prospects. For this reason, the chapter examines the theories of three leading environmental political theorists: Eckersley, Dryzek, and Barry. Although their works largely fall far short of identifying practical political openings for restructuring existing state institutions and practices, the issues and problems they raise remain instructive. The second half of the chapter assesses these concerns against broader contemporary political trends, in particular concerns about “democratic deficits” and the theories of “post-democracy” that have accompanied them. It examines the “ecological paradox” that a post-democratic politics poses for a sustainable transformation. These issues suggest that the pursuit of environmental democracy might best look for alternative locations outside of the state.