The tobacco endgame: intellectual property, human rights, and sustainable development

This chapter explores the relationship between intellectual property and sustainable development in the context of the public health efforts to address the global tobacco epidemic. It provides an account of the role of Gro Harlem Brundtland in both shaping the discourse of sustainable development, and building the institution of the World Health Organization, and establishing the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control 2003. This chapter considers the legal conflicts over intellectual property and sustainable development. Big Tobacco has launched legal actions in superior courts, questioning the introduction of pioneering public health measures, such as graphic health warnings and plain packaging of tobacco products. There have also been disputes in investment tribunals and trade panels as to whether public health tobacco control measures are compatible with trade and investment laws. This chapter finally examines the efforts of tobacco companies to depict themselves as sustainable, environmentally sound, climate-friendly actors. It is argued that there is a need to take remedial enforcement action against tobacco companies engaged in greenwashing, which are making false and misleading claims about the environment, the climate, and sustainable development.