Celebration Series for the 35th Anniversary of the RIEL & Luojia Lecture Series on Environmental Law No. 22

Title: Environmental Protection, Trade and Investment Presenter: Dr Kate Miles, University of Cambridge Moderator: Professor Ben Boer, Chair Professor, Research Institute of Environmental Law, Wuhan University Discussant: Mr. Hu Bin, Assistant Director, Research Institute of Environmental Law, Wuhan University Time: 14:30-16:30; March 28, 2016 (Monday) Venue: Room 325, Law School Building

Participants: All staff and students of the RIEL, as well as all Wuhan University Academic Staff and students are welcome to participate in this lecture.

Outline of presentation The relationship between environmental protection, trade and foreign investment is complex. It encompasses both the conflict of norms and objectives between these areas as well as a more harmonious mode of interaction in which synergies can be harnessed and initiatives developed to use trade and investment to promote environmental protection. One especially contentious area is the increasing prevalence of environmental issues within international trade and investment disputes. In particular, investor-state arbitral proceedings have been instigated and complaints have been filed with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in response to domestic environmental protection measures. There have also been recent moves to incorporate environmental requirements within international trade and investment instruments, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement signed in February 2016 in New Zealand. This lecture examines the multifaceted nature of this relationship, including foreign investor environmental damage, the way in which domestic environmental measures are being challenged in the context of trade and investment, and the shift to greater accommodation of environmental protection and sustainable development needs within trade and investment treaties. Biography: Dr Kate Miles Dr Kate Miles is a Fellow and Lecturer in Law at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge. Prior to her appointment at Caius, she was a Senior Lecturer in International Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Sydney, specializing in international investment law and international environmental law. She is the author of a monograph published in the Cambridge University Press series, Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law, entitled: The Origins of International Investment Law: Empire, Environment and the Safeguarding of Capital. Dr Miles is also a Fellow of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, a Fellow of the Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance (C-EENRG), and a Research Fellow with the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL), Montreal, Canada. She has served on the International Law Association’s Study Group on the Role of Soft Law Instruments in International Investment Law and coordinated the international investment law network for the Society of International Economic Law (SIEL). She served as the Deputy Director of the Australian Centre for Climate and Environmental Law, University of Sydney, and acted as a consultant to Asia Pacific Economic Community (APEC), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and the International Development Law Organization (IDLO) on matters related to investor-state arbitration and climate change. She also practiced for several years in the litigation departments of leading commercial law firms in Auckland and Sydney, including at Allens Arthur Robinson (now Allens Linklaters).