KPS
Karl P. Sauvant
Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment
Senior Fellow
Description
Karl P. Sauvant, Ph.D., is Senior Fellow at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI) at Columbia University; Lecturer-in-Law at Columbia Law School (where he teaches a seminar on FDI and public policy); Fellow, Academy of International Business; and Honorary Fellow, European International Business Academy. He is a national of Germany, married to Silvana F. da Silva, a national of Brazil.
Dr. Sauvant launched, in 2015, a proposal for an international support program to facilitate sustainable investment; structured discussions on a multilateral Investment Facilitation for Development Agreement began in the WTO in 2018, were upgraded to negotiations in 2020 and the text negotiations were concluded in July 2023. He has advocated, since 2004, the establishment of an Advisory Center on International Investment Law, a proposal that was put on the agenda of the United Nations Commission on Trade Law (UNCITRAL) in October 2019. In 1998, he began championing the establishment of a facility to help developing countries negotiate large-scale contracts with international investors (during 2011-2016 in cooperation with Peter Eigen); Germany took up the proposal, and the G7 endorsed it in 2014, under the name of “CONNEX”; Germany established the CONNEX Support Unit in 2017. In January 2006, Sauvant established the Columbia Program on International Investment (today the CCSI), serving as its Executive Director until February 2012. As Chief of the Research Section of the United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations, he created the World Investment Report in 1991 and was its lead author until 2004, at UNCTAD, where he was the Director of the Organization’s Investment Division (2001-2005); he also founded the journal Transnational Corporations, serving as its editor until 2005.
Dr. Sauvant received a Ph.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. He joined the United Nations in 1973 and, as of 1975, has focused his work on matters related to FDI. He has published extensively on issues related to economic development and various aspects of foreign direct investment (see: https://ssrn.com/author=2461782 and http://www.works.bepress.com/karl_sauvant/).
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