Governments will soon meet in Colombia for the first ever global conference focused on the fossil fuel phase-out.
Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), the system which is allowing a hedge fund to sue the UK government over a cancelled coal mine, is on the agenda.
The UK has confirmed it will attend the Colombia conference. When there, it needs to be part of putting an end to corporate courts.
Can you ask your MP to pressure the government to make this the beginning of the end for corporate courts?
- What are corporate courts?
Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) is a shadowy system of corporate courts, which governments give companies access to by writing them into trade and investment deals. These courts operate outside national legal systems and allow corporations to sue governments for actions they allege harm their profits – like windfall taxes, banning oil drilling and making life-saving medicines more affordable.
We've been campaigning for the UK to scrap these Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions from its trade deals for years. Together, we got the UK to quit the climate-wrecking Energy Charter Treaty, a particularly bad ISDS deal. But now the UK is being sued for taxpayers' money by the firm behind the Cumbria coal mine, which was quashed by the High Court in 2024. At the same time, UK companies are using corporate courts to block governments around the world from taking action to protect the environment and human rights.
In April, for the first time ever, ISDS will be a key pillar of discussion at a global climate conference. The Colombian government is hosting the conference alongside the Netherlands, and recently announced its intention to scrap corporate courts, making this a critical opportunity to persuade the UK to join them.
Photo: UNClimateChange/Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)