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Pressure mounts on UK to join coordinated exit from secretive corporate court system, during COP30
Photo: Global Justice Now

Global Justice Now | 6 November 2025

Pressure mounts on UK to join coordinated exit from secretive corporate court system, during COP30

Civil society coalition will hold press conference and side event at COP30 to urge governments to go ‘ISDS free’ to protect sovereign climate policy

The UK is being urged by civil society and trading partners to address Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) as a “systemic obstacle to climate action” at the COP30 climate summit.

A coalition of civil society organisations including Global Justice Now, ABColombia and the Southern and Eastern Africa Trade Information and Negotiations Institute Uganda (SEATINI), alongside prominent figures including Elisa Morgera, UN Special Rapporteur on Climate Change & Human Rights and Irene Vélez Torres, Colombian Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development, will be hosting a side event at this year’s COP30 to urge governments worldwide including the UK to go ‘ISDS free’.

EVENT DETAILS

Press conference: Saturday 15 November 2025, 14:00 – 14:30 at the Colombia pavilion.

Followed by official side event: Exiting ISDS: An initiative to phase out a major obstacle to climate actionSaturday 15 November 202515:00—16:30, Side Event Room 7

  • Irene Vélez Torres, Colombian Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development
  • Elisa Morgera, UN Special Rapporteur on Climate Change & Human Rights
  • Nick Dearden, Global Justice Now
  • Herbert Kafeero, SEATINI

ISDS is a mechanism written into trade deals that allows corporations to sue states outside national legal systems in secretive international tribunals, over policies they allege damage their business interests. Fossil fuel companies globally have been by far the biggest beneficiaries, winning over $80 billion in ISDS claims.

This call comes as the UK government has recently been hit by its first ISDS case over a climate policy, sued by investors in the quashed Cumbria coal mine. If the case is ruled in favour of the investors, taxpayers will foot the compensation award which in comparable cases has run into the millions or billions. Either way, states also spend on average $5 million in defending themselves.

UK investors are among the most aggressive users of ISDS, having claimed over $40 billion – of which almost £19 billion is from fossil fuel-related cases.(1) This is almost twice as much as the international climate finance paid by the UK between 2011-2021 of £9.8 billion. Recent research shows the UK protects more potential annual greenhouse gas emissions than any other country via its ISDS treaties.

2025 has been a record-breaking year for ISDS cases filed by oil, gas and mining firms. High profile claims have been over a coal phase-out, a ban on offshore drilling, and strengthening an environmental impact assessment on a fracking project. Merely the threat of ISDS has generated ‘regulatory chill’, with the climate ministers of Denmark and New Zealand admitting that the spectre of ISDS claims stopped them being more ambitious in their climate policies. .

Many countries are now moving away from ISDS, with European countries recently exiting the most litigated ISDS agreement, the Energy Charter Treaty, and Australia, New Zealand and the US committing to exclude ISDS from new trade deals and review existing ones. But many countries, particularly in the global south, face enormous pressure to sign new or retain ISDS treaties. This is despite a large amount of academic literature showing a negligible correlation between investment treaties and foreign direct investment (FDI) flows.

The government of Colombia recently called on the UK to remove ISDS from the UK-Colombia Bilateral Investment Treaty.

Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now said:

In the last two years, some of the richest countries in the world have begun to exit ISDS, recognising the constraints these corporate courts pose to their sovereign climate policy. And yet, these governments are still putting ISDS in deals they make with global south countries. But these are the countries that need the most policy space when it comes to climate change. We hope through this initiative, we can strengthen the hands of all countries that see the need to exit this toxic system.”

Notes to editor