Research Fellows Amber Rose Maggio and Dafina Atanasova participated in the 16th ASLI (Asian Law Institute) conference on ‘The Rule of Law and the Role of Law in Asia’. Dr Maggio gave a presentation on ‘Regional Cooperation for the Protection of the Marine Environment in Southeast Asia: Can Other Regions Provide Inspiration?’ She presented CIL’s work on this topic and some ideas about best practices and shared experiences.

Dr Atanasova presented her paper titled ‘Investment Treaties Viewed from Inside the Lion City’. The paper is part of the broader research project on ‘Investment Treaties and National Governance’ (headed by CIL Research Associate Professor Jansen Calamita), studying the extent to which the administrations of Asian states take investment treaties into account in their decision-making processes. Based on a series of interviews with government officials in Singapore and documentary research, the paper opens the ‘black box’ of the Lion City and looks at the impact of investment treaties on its governance. A unitary compact state, Singapore is considered to work as a well-oiled machine and provides a very fruitful terrain for testing some of the core tenets of arguments on investment treaties’ impacts on governance.