scholarly journals The Lack of the Environmental Concern in Indonesia’s Bilateral Investment Treaties

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 231
Author(s):  
I Gusti Ngurah Parikesit Widiatedja ◽  
I Gusti Ngurah Wairocana

In the modern era, Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) are relatively effective to attract more foreign direct investment (FDI). Many countries then eagerly concluded BITs, including Indonesia. Considering the adverse impact of FDI on the environment, most countries then start putting the environmental concern in their BITs, assisting them to prevent and mitigate any adverse impact of FDI on the environment. Indonesia, however, did not follow this measure. This paper then shows the lack of the current Indonesia’s BITs in putting the environmental concern in their provisions. The fact that Indonesia has terminated some BITs becomes a right momentum to start putting the environmental concern in the updated and modified Indonesia BITs in the future. From other countries’ practices, there is evidence to suggest that BITs can and do contain provisions aimed at ameliorating environmental damage caused as a result of FDI within host countries’ territories.


2021 ◽  
Vol 94 (3) ◽  
pp. 519-557
Author(s):  
Yue Lu ◽  
Linghui Wu ◽  
Ka Zeng

This paper examines the effect of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) in promoting Chinese outward foreign direct investment (COFDI) in the presence of rising economic policy uncertainty in China's partner countries. We postulate that the signing of BITs should help stimulate COFDI because the treaties send a credible signal to foreign investors about the host country's intent to protect Chinese investment, and make it more difficult for the host country to violate its treaty obligations. BITs that contain rigorous investment protection and liberalization provisions, in particular, should be more likely to encourage COFDI as they directly influence Chinese investors' expectations about the stability, predictability, and security of the host market. However, while BITs generally promote COFDI, host country economic policy uncertainty may also limit their effectiveness. This is because uncertainty tends to undermine investor confidence, trigger capital flows from high- to low-risk countries, and dampen commercial activities. Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood (PPML) estimation models of the determinants of COFDI to 188 countries between 2003 and 2017 lend substantial support to our conjectures.





2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Terence K. Teo ◽  

In contrast to the substantial scholarship on whether bilateral investment treaties (BITs) increase foreign direct investment (FDI), there is less work on what drives governments to sign these treaties in the first place. I develop a theory of treaty signing that emphasizes the domestic factors that motivate a government to sign BITs. Using a panel dataset of developing countries from 1960 to 2010, I find that governments scarce in natural resources are more likely to sign BITs compared to their richer counterparts. In addition, governments with middle levels of property rights are more likely to sign BITs compared to those with low or high levels. Finally, the most likely BIT signers are resource-scarce countries with middle levels of property rights. That strategic dynamics exist in BIT signing has implications for assessing the effects of these treaties in other issue areas such as trade, human rights, and the environment.



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