Strengthening coherence and synergies of international investment agreements with national legal investment frameworks for sustainable development: Case studies of Thailand and Viet Nam

As laid out in the introduction of this volume, FDI is a key source of capital, technology and access to markets for recipient countries, and it has therefore become an invaluable mechanism for boosting developing countries’ economic growth and development. With the mainstreaming of the sustainable development agenda globally recipient countries have started to prioritize increasing both the quantity and quality of FDI they attract. As was discussed in chapter 2, sustainable development-oriented IIAs can be an effective tool for helping countries achieve this; but much progress still needs to be made in terms of concluding and reforming the IIA regime in Asia-Pacific to make it more sustainable-development oriented. Aside from increasing the number and extent of sustainable development provisions in their IIAs, as suggested by the analysis in chapter 2, another avenue countries in the region could pursue to ensure that IIAs are broadly consistent with their individual sustainable development objectives and priorities would be to focus on improving FDI governance frameworks. To this end, this chapter suggests that it is of paramount importance that efforts in this vein especially focus on improving the coherence, consistency and interaction between domestic and international investment governance frameworks. This refers to both domestic investment laws and regulations as well as IIAs, including BITs and TIPs.

Sustainable Development Goals:

Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure