ABSTRACT
The opposition to the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) was one of the seminal events of the 1990s in the process of attempting to develop an approach to globalisation that is sensitive to a range of considerations, in addition to those of a purely economic nature. The opposition to the MAI has, however, led to a widespread attitude, certainly in the environmental community, that an investment agreement is a bad thing. That is a fundamental mistake. The investment provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have become the focus of significant controversy concerning their ability to interfere with legitimate regulatory activities of public authorities. In addition to the MAI, the only major economic negotiation to have been abandoned, there was an effort spearheaded by the United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC) in the 1970s to negotiate a code of conduct for multinational corporations.
