Environmental Protection

The blog posts presented in this symposium indicate that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the renewable energy (RE) sector is desirable to support decarbonisation and clean energy transformation in developing countries such as Nigeria. Despite the enormous potential for RE based on the natural conditions in Nigeria, there is high level of energy poverty and low level of investments in RE sector by both government and private investors.

There is a need for the international community to be circumspect in eliciting commitments for greenhouse gas emissions and other forms of climate change adaptation and mitigation targets from African countries, without a holistic assessment of how the process of achieving these commitments will affect the development trajectory of the continent. In addition to galvanising greater international support for FDI in renewables for country’s such as Nigeria with significant potential for renewable energy generation for domestic consumption, it is imperative that the proposed energy mix is affordable and suited to the local development needs.

This contribution aims to examine Nigeria’s use of Green Bonds as an example of an innovative policy initiative which has the potential to promote economic development while simultaneously reducing Nigeria’s carbon emission levels.

TNSC Regulation may also be at odds with values and domestic policies in third States that are affected by it, which raises the question whether at a certain point the laudable fight against corporate impunity risks becoming an interference in those third States’ regulatory sovereignty. This question, of course, presupposes a broad approach to the notion (and analysis) of regulatory sovereignty. This is because “regulatory sovereignty” is usually referred to in the realm of international investment law, with discussions centering on legal obstacles for host States to freely implement policies in light of obligations on the State vis-à-vis the investor, and its home State, respectively.

Unfortunately, the Guide appears to be blind to the way in which conceiving land and tenure rights in the context of global vale chains can multiply the relevant spaces of engagement and challenges the traditional notion of jurisdictional spaces and fragmentation. Luckily, communities, activists and lawyers acting on the ground have come to this realization long ago, and I  believe that they will find the best way to use a document that aims to normalize large-scale investments but can also open new interesting spaces for political and legal resistance.