Fossil fuel firms are biggest beneficiaries of investor-state dispute settlement courts which have awarded $114bn of public money

Unlike national courts, ISDS tribunals allow investors to shape the panels that will hear their case, creating “obvious risks of bias, conflicts of interest, potential misconduct and other abuses of power”, according to a UN report last October.

The ISDS system had prevented states from taking climate action, even when it had been “necessary and foreseeable for decades”, the report found.

The tracker has a searchable archive of all 1,362 ISDS cases filed. It shows that investors have so far tried to claim $857bn from national governments, with 129 claims registered for $1bn or more.