Trade deals can allow international companies to trample on the rights of governments in the Global South. That’s the message from the Colombian government, which describes the effect of such deals as “bloodbath” for their national sovereignty. And now, Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro has said he wants to renegotiate his country’s deal with the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom.

His case is strong, as the United States and European countries have also been renegotiating similar trade and investment deals over the past few years as they try to prevent themselves from being sued in the secretive “corporate courts” created by these agreements.

Just this year, the UK government withdrew from a toxic investment deal called the Energy Charter Treaty, following a series of cases in which European governments were sued by fossil fuel companies over climate action they said harmed them. corporate profits.

So the question now is whether European countries will accept that countries in the South need the same policy space to deal with climate change and the many other problems they face. Or will they require these countries to continue to abide by these terrible, one-sided agreements.

At the heart of the matter is Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS). In essence, ISDS creates a “corporate court” that allows multinational corporations in trading partner countries to sue governments in international courts.

These “corporate courts” have been included in trade and investment agreements since the 1950s and were originally conceived as a way to protect Western interests in developing countries. They created a legal system that would make it more difficult for governments that might want to nationalize oil fields owned by Western multinationals. From the outset, therefore, there was an implicit neocolonial overtone to these transactions.

But over time, the scope of these corporate courts was expanded by corporate lawyers. Today, businesses can sue over almost any law or regulation they don’t like. Worse, these cases are often heard in secret, overseen by corporate lawyers who don’t have to worry about the social, human rights or environmental impacts of their decisions – only investment law. These “courts” usually have no right of appeal and can only be used by foreign investors.

Tobacco companies therefore use ISDS to challenge governments that want to ensure that cigarettes are sold only in plain packaging. They have been used to challenge increases in the minimum wage and windfall taxes. But they are increasingly being used to challenge the kinds of environmental regulations needed to stop climate change. In fact, they are becoming a major obstacle to the climate action governments must take to keep the planet habitable.

As a result, Western countries find themselves receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from corporations simply for fulfilling their democratic obligations. Not surprisingly, they are revoking the treaties that put them in this situation. But they are less willing to allow other governments to take the same measures. One rule for us, another for the Southern Hemisphere.

The Colombian government decided to expose this hypocrisy and take matters into its own hands. President Petro said companies should never have been allowed to resolve disputes outside national courts, and instead Colombia was forced to “put itself in the mouth of the wolf.”

He is right. Over the past decade, 23 known cases have been brought against Colombia under ISDS, many of which were brought by foreign mining companies in direct response to measures taken by Colombia to protect the natural environment and indigenous rights.

Mining giant Glencore, for example, filed a lawsuit against Colombia after its Constitutional Court decided to halt planned expansion of what was already Latin America’s largest open-pit coal mine.

The Serrejón mine has faced strong local opposition, resulting in toxic contamination of air, soil and water, and the displacement of 35 indigenous communities from their ancestral territories. The Constitutional Court ruled that the mine expansion would seriously affect local community ecosystems.

Glencore said the court’s ruling was discriminatory, unreasonable and arbitrary and launched four separate cases against Colombia using ISDS. It won the first case and was awarded $19 million, while three other cases are still pending for undisclosed amounts.

In another case, Canadian mining company Eco Oro is seeking $696 million in damages over a Constitutional Court ruling to protect paramos, a rare high-altitude wetland ecosystem that is an important source of fresh water. Although the ISDS regime in question was clearly supposed to guarantee the government policy space to protect the environment, the arbitration panel ruled that this environmental exception did not preclude the obligation to pay compensation.

Colombia is not alone. In recent years, countries such as Kenya, South Africa and Ecuador have begun to exit this deeply undemocratic system. One of the first treaties Colombia hopes to renegotiate is the British-Colombian agreement. Colombia’s ambassador to the UK unequivocally condemned the agreement, saying the treaties “have become a burden for Colombia and many other countries” and specifically noting that they give the fossil fuel industry the power to resist climate action and sue countries “because they don’t get what they want through pollution.” income”.

But they will face serious opposition. This means they will need the support of British citizens and movements. Fortunately, the union of civil servants who work in the UK government and are responsible for negotiating trade deals has come out in support of Colombia’s position, saying “we need real climate action”.

We must join them. ISDS is a mysterious system, but in recent years activists have pulled it out of the shadows and begun dismantling it in numerous trade deals. Seventy years after this neo-colonial system emerged, we can finally defeat it. If we want to stop climate change and build democracy, we need to act fast. Colombia is on the front lines now and they need our support.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.