As the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) becomes an influential actor in international investment rule-making, this article scrutinizes the environmental provisions within ASEAN investment agreements and evaluates their adequacy in preserving ASEAN member states’ (AMS) regulatory autonomy for environmental protection. Through a comprehensive survey of fifteen plurilateral investment agreements, the study conducts a comparative analysis with international treaty practices to determine the effectiveness of these provisions in reconciling environmental concerns with foreign investment promotion objectives. These findings reveal that environmental provisions in ASEAN investment agreements are often vague or narrowly tailored, limiting their ability to provide adequate regulatory space for AMS to implement necessary environmental measures. This article concludes by offering recommendations for enhancing environmental provisions in future ASEAN investment agreements to ensure a more balanced approach safeguarding both investment promotion and environmental regulation rights of AMS.

The primary purpose of this paper is to know which formulation of FET standard among the diverse drafting approaches best serves the interests of both States and investors. In this respect, the paper first will have a review of general categorization of FET in a number of IIAs. Subsequently, it will focus on the two most controversial formulations of FET: (1) as a standalone clause and (2) with reference to the minimum standard of treatment under customary international law. In light of this, it will discuss the impact of the various FET drafts on the decisions of arbitral tribunals dealing with this standard. Lastly, the paper will also explore the most recent approaches to the formulation of FET to see if they are capable of brining clarity in the overall discussion of FET’s formulation as well as interpretation. In short, these recent constructions of FET clauses may best serve these interests as they bring clarity.

China’s foreign investment has been growing rapidly since 1990s. In this course, the first investor-state arbitration case raised by a mainland Chinese investor, Ping An v. Belgium, drew attention to an important issue – jurisdiction ratione temporis in successive international investment agreements. It is controversial in theory and practice as to whether the basic principle of non-retroactivity should apply to the dispute settlement clause in a successive agreement. This is especially true when tribunals are interpreting different kinds of jurisdictional clauses. This paper will take the Ping An Case as an opportunity to thoroughly analyze the issue of temporal jurisdiction in successive international investment agreements. Based on such analysis, this paper will also do reflection on relevant articles in China’s existing investment agreements, providing suggestions to China regarding the issue of jurisdiction ratione temporis, in an effort to make arbitration more certain and avoid possible dismissal, as occurred in the Ping An Case.