The Conflict And Harmonization Of International Investment Agreements And Domestic Environmental Measures

International investment aiming to promote the economic development of host countries, can also bring a series of environmental problems. China, as the largest developing country, the problem is particularly outstanding. Facing this kind of situation, the host country needs to take domestic measures to regulate the investors to conduct in the way of protecting the environment, but for foreign direct investment, it is not a problem only related to domestic law, but also including the investment obligations under multilateral treaty or bilateral agreement. Multilateral investment treaties or agreements are enacted to protect the foreign investment in the host country, usually require the host country take measures to protect foreign investment, including giving foreign investment national treatment, most-favored-national treatment, fair and equitable treatment, no expropriation without compensation and so forth, which makes domestic measures for environment protection taken by host states be conflicted with the international investment treaty. NAFTA treaty makes a positive contribution in the international investment treaties to take care of the environment of the host states, it considers environmental protection, stipulates that all parties should not attract and encourage foreign investment through relaxing domestic healthy, safety and environmental standards. This attitude is worth affirmation, but in practice, domestic environmental measures taken by the host country could still conflict with protection provisions in the international investment treaty, how to coordinate this conflict not only has theoretical and practical significance to all host countries, but also can be reference to China to realize the balance between the international agreement and domestic environmental measures.This paper will be divided into five parts:The first part mainly introduces the causes of conflict between the current international investment and environmental protection. Through the concrete analysis of the host environmental impact caused by the international investment, and the theoretical analysis of the motive of pollution transfer, clarified developed countries and developing countries different positions on this problems.The second part is the introduction of international investment legal systems related to environment protection. Through the introduction of international investment agreements, and points out that the general international investment agreements one-sided emphasis on investor protection while ignoring the rights of the host, then take NAFTA as an example to point out that the international society begin to pay close attention to the environmental interests of host states in international investment treaty through detailed analysis of the environmental regulations in this treaty.The third part is further analysis of the performance of the legal conflict between the international investment agreements and domestic measures for the environmental interest. Through concrete cases, points out the domestic environmental protection measures could violate the protection provisions in the international investment treaty, for example it can violate fair and equitable treatment, expropriation provisions, making the conflict with the international obligations under international investment treaty. And has chilling effect to host states to take measures to regulate.The fourth part try to coordinate the conflict between the international investment treaty and domestic environmental measures. Suggest discriminate treatment for investment in pre-established stages, introduce environmental-friendly technology investments. For the established investment, give no-discriminate treatment and reasonable explanation of the fair and equitable treatment. In the new international investment agreements signed process, clarify the fuzzy concept to some extend, excludes the domestic environmental measures outside the scope of expropriation. Finally, accept international investment dispute settlement mechanism carefully to reduce risk sued.The fifth part combined with China's concrete circumstance, pointed out the real problems China faced and give suggestions to improve. Through the research of problems, give suggestions from the point of the legislation improvement and the international treaty establishment and explanation. Such as improving domestic environmental standards, formulate international environmental standard system; Internalization of environmental costs .In bilateral investment treaty to the interests of the environment attention emphasized, adopt a series of measures to realize balance of interest protection between investors and the host states.In Conclusion part the author aims to comprehensive review the law conflicts and coordination between the international investment agreement and domestic environmental measures.