While most sovereign entities have committed to greening their economies and investment under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), several of them are also bound by obligations contracted under the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT), which protects investors in renewables and fossil fuel alike. Arguably, such a situation triggers a ‘regulatory clash’ that has the potential to impede the implementation of net zero carbon policies, such as the European Green Deal. This contribution contextualises the ECT within the framework of the UNFCCC and scopes the potential conflict between such regulatory regimes. Particularly, in light of the so-called ‘sunset’ clause, the contribution concludes that a suitable avenue to resolve the clash is establishing a preferential track for investment in clean energy under the ECT. On this basis, fundamental solutions are envisaged for greening investment, by applying model de lege ferenda proposals for a substantive and procedural modernisation of the ECT.

In Chapter 3, ‘The Proliferation of Indigenous Peoples’ Participation, 1982–2007’, I trace how a pattern of state practice unfurled over a span of 25 years, beginning with the establishment of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP) and spreading to numerous other UN organs, international organizations, and other international governance mechanisms. It at first takes a chronological approach, tracing relevant practice from 1988 to 1994 in processes such as the negotiations towards the International Labour Organization Convention No. 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, UN conferences, and several UN expert workshops. It then considers how momentum grew towards the establishment of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. The chapter next turns to consider several parallel trends. It turns to mechanisms for Indigenous peoples’ participation in environment and development negotiations, before tracing Indigenous peoples’ participation in decision-making in international development institutions. The chapter ends by examining three regional stories: the Arctic, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the European Union.

The author examines the interplay between the individual and collective dimensions of treaty-based law-making and standard-setting processes in the United Nations climate regime. The reason why the author attempts to do so is that multilateral treaties have been the main anchors for international environmental law-making. In this context, State consent not only has individual effects, but also feeds into a collective process. The chapter begins by exploring the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. It then turns to the Paris Agreement and the shift to what has been described as a ‘bottom-up’ approach. The perhaps most striking feature of this approach is its reliance on non-binding, ‘nationally determined contributions’ (hereafter NDCs). From the vantage point of State consent, the most significant consequence of the Paris Agreement’s NDC approach is a shift away from the anchoring of consent to climate action in treaty-based processes, and hence from the linkages that adoption and entry-into-force requirements establish between multiple parties’ individual expressions of consent.

One way to study agreement-making and its actors, processes, sites, and how they shape global order is through texts produced along the way. In any given multilateral environmental negotiation, there are implementation reports, decisions, resolutions, statements, newsletters, and other technical reports that are often written in a language all of their own. They contain phrases that have a long history and may indicate more than they appear at face value. Choices of words, phrases, and qualifying language often tell part of the story of how governments and other delegates at conferences compromised and reached agreement. This chapter examines the importance of understanding documents at multilateral environmental negotiations in context and what they can and cannot tell you. First we explain why studying negotiations through the documentation is important. We then give a brief overview of the different types of documents you encounter at a COP or other negotiating session, then turn to the question of context, and show how social norms and institutional settings can influence the creation of texts, which in turn could influence research that relies on those texts. Finally, we utilize a case study to show how to consider context when using documents for research.