Merso, Fikremarkos(Assistant Professor)Abebe, Hailu2021-04-092023-11-082021-04-092023-11-082020http://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/123456789/26035Most countries adopt Bilateral Investment Treaties to drive their economic development and to get an increase in foreign capital. Yet, investment treaties are traditionally designed towards the protection of investors and investment. Usually, a government is held accountable under international arbitrations to make indirect expropriation when it passes a domestic regulation, including environmental laws that slightly affect host state investors' investments. However, as environmental concerns have risen to prominence nowadays, the nation state's importance in addressing the issues has been recognized. As a result, countries, especially developed countries, designed their contemporary BITs to integrate environmental protection as a vital matter. Therefore, this paper made an in-depth examination of the Implications of Bilateral Investment Treaties on Environmental Protection in Ethiopia. In doing so, both the law and the practical scenarios have been assessed. Accordingly, the study discovered that, with few exceptions, most BITs to which Ethiopia is a party has significant drawbacks concerning the environmental concern and portray features of old-generation investment treaties. The notion of sustainable development, which is the principal policy basis under the FDRE Constitution and subsidiary domestic laws, has not been incorporated in most BITs. Furthermore, most BITs to which Ethiopia is a party did not grant contracting state regulatory power for environmental protection. So, environmental measures that might be taken may be highly limited, and this will, in turn, finally pose a risk of environmental pollution. Therefore, the paper recommended a remedial measure, including reforming existing BITs through renegotiation and amendment to explicitly include environmental protection standards. Furthermore, Ethiopia needs to prepare an all-encompassing and carefully designed model of BIT promptly.enImplications of Bilateral InvestmentThesis