This book on International Investment Law (IIL) in the Caribbean context is different from other texts on the subject .Unlike other works on the subject of IIL this book is Caribbean focused and seeks to examine IIL from a Third World perspective. It attempts to determine and assess the impact of the power asymmetry inherent in North – South interactions which takes place in everyday economic transactions and situate it with the Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) framework. Secondly , the book seeks to isolate a particular case and drill into how BITs protect foreign investments from government overreach. The case at issue is British Caribbean Bank Limited v The Government of Belize where foreign investors were threatened by government action driven not by policy but by politics. The very reason for the existence of BITs is to minimize the political risks of foreign investments from the developed North. Such foreign direct investments (FDI’s) can be good in driving economic growth but the downside is that they increase economic dependency , entrench development paradigms such as tourism investments in Aruba and invariably impact policy and politics in small island developing states (SIDS) in the Caribbean as the impact of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) attest.
Where BITs become a challenge to the sovereignty of Caribbean states in terms of setting social and environmental policies and limiting policy space and policy action by legitimately elected governments, they need to be critically reviewed. It is this the book attempts to do. This is an initial step and it is not a perfect launch into BITs in the Caribbean context . It is an attempt at a deep dive. There is obviously more research to be done yet it is clear too that BITs have evolved and will continue to consider environmental , health and social factors as they continue to be challenged by Third World states. There appears to be a trend away from being exploitative in intent to limiting foreign investors interference in domestic policy as well as providing for host states to assert some level of sovereignty that was lacking in older BITs. There is some hope that this trend continues.
This book should be looked at as the start of the beginning in critically examining the role of BITs in the Caribbean space . As policy makers from the global South become aware of the potential for serious damage to the domestic social and environmental fabric as a consequence of unfettered globalization facilitated by the spread of BITs they will seek to reexamine the costs and benefits of these treaties and the structural bias embedded in its settlement mechanism.
