Caribbean Summit Showcases the Power of Island Politics

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Antigua and Barbuda hosts a climate summit, Mexico prepares for its historic general elections, and a corporate merger could affect Guyana’s oil fields.

Climate Progress in Court and Beyond

Heads of state as well as U.N. and World Bank officials were among those who convened in the Caribbean country of Antigua and Barbuda this week for the fourth Small Island Developing States conference. Since 1994, island nations around the world—which are particularly vulnerable to shocks such as tropical storms and sea level rise—have used the summit to finesse their strategies and demands for global climate talks.

This year, host nation Antigua and Barbuda made news even before the event kicked off.

On May 21, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), which oversees maritime law, issued a first-of-its kind decision in response to a petition filed by Antigua and Barbuda as well as Tuvalu on behalf of nine island countries. The ruling found that governments are responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions that cause marine pollution and should set policies to reduce them.

Although the ITLOS verdict is a nonbinding opinion, experts expect that it could serve as precedent for two climate cases making their way through international courts. Chile and Colombia brought a case before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) asking for details on governments’ duties to prevent and mitigate the harms of climate change.

A Vanuatu-led U.N. General Assembly resolution requested an opinion at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on states’ legal obligations to protect the climate and the consequences if they fail to do so.

Like the ITLOS ruling, the advisory verdicts at the IACHR and ICJ cannot legally compel states or companies to take specific climate action. But such opinions can create frameworks for governments or firms to be sued in the future.

“Some countries are of the view that they’re not being heard, and that other channels or pathways are not delivering the climate justice that is deserved,” said Colby College environmental studies professor Stacy-ann Robinson. The new strategy aims to “try the formal judicial system in addition to any advocacy work that might be needed,” she told Foreign Policy.

Much of that advocacy work, meanwhile, has focused on changing the rules of the global economy—efforts that were on full display at the Antigua and Barbuda summit.

At the talks, Rebeca Grynspan—the secretary-general of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development—invoked the idea of a “reverse blood transfusion from the poor and weak to the strong,” saying that outflows from small island developing states currently trump inflows, largely due to debt payments. Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley said that the climate funding available to small island countries amounted to just “a drop compared to the rest of the financing going for manmade problems like war.”

Those critiques were accompanied by ideas for reforming the global financial system. Antigua and Barbuda and the Maldives suggested a new mechanism for evaluating countries’ creditworthiness and negotiating loans, while other policies were floated for inclusion in a lengthy summit communiqué. Mottley presented a new iteration of the Bridgetown Initiative, a set of proposals for reforming lending at global financial institutions that she first introduced in 2022.

Bridgetown was updated with more ambitious targets in part because some of its previous asks have been adopted: The World Bank is rolling out climate disaster clauses in its lending to vulnerable countries, which can suspend debt repayments in the event of a weather catastrophe, and earlier this month, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) voted to allow some of its Special Drawing Rights to be used by development banks to create new capital instruments.

But those changes are still inadequate, island leaders said this week. According to a high-level expert group convened as part of U.N. climate talks, an additional $1.8 trillion per year is needed in emerging and developing countries to address the climate crisis.

Small islands are continuing to raise their collective voice. After presenting an exhaustive list of the upcoming global summits that she plans attend to promote the Bridgetown agenda, Mottley said “[w]e should leave the [October World Bank and IMF] annual meetings with surcharges behind us,” an allusion to a type of IMF fee that borrower countries have long decried as abusive.

Mottley spoke with a confidence rarely heard when discussing change at the slow-to-evolve IMF. But then again, small island states have a track record of delivering disproportionately large results.

Upcoming Events

Saturday, June 1: Nayib Bukele is inaugurated for his second term as El Salvador’s president.

Saturday, June 1: Chilean President Gabriel Boric gives a state of the nation address.

Sunday, June 2: Mexico holds general elections.

What We’re Following

Chevron enters the chat. On Tuesday, shareholders of U.S. oil giant Hess greenlit a closely watched corporate takeover that is poised to affect operations in Guyana’s offshore oil bonanza. Until now, Guyana’s major Stabroek oil field has been led by a joint venture between ExxonMobil, Hess, and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC). But Chevron moved to buy Hess last year in a merger that underscores the value of Guyana’s offshore oil reserves.

ExxonMobil and CNOOC tried to block the deal, filing a complaint in a Paris legal arbitration court and triggering a case that is expected to extend into next year. Exxon’s CEO said it might want to take over Hess’s shares of the Guyana oil field rather than Chevron. That would boost Exxon’s stake to 75 percent of the project.

The events, which the Wall Street Journal called the most dramatic legal battle in the U.S. oil capital since the 1980s, prompted Guyana’s president to weigh in. He said that it “can cause concern” if one business controls over half of a market.

Haiti has a PM at last. Divisions on Haiti’s transitional governing council were overcome this week when the body unanimously endorsed a new prime minister. Garry Conille is a longtime international aid official who briefly led Haiti following the country’s 2010 earthquake. A doctor by training, he also served for 25 years in organizations including the U.N. and has spent much of his career based outside of Haiti.

The council passed over candidates with more experience in Haiti’s domestic politics. In the country’s provisional leadership structure, Conille will not be required to earn the support of the legislature to govern. Conille’s appointment is especially important as a Kenyan-led multinational security mission to the country is set to begin in June.

It’s an “institutional step forward,” wrote security expert Romain Le Cour of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime on X. He added that it’s also a sign of “progress for accountability: there is someone in charge.”

Spectators sit on boats watching a film projected on a screen during the Muyuna Floating Film Festival in Iquitos, Peru, on May 24.Hugo Curotto/AFP via Getty Images

Floating cinema. It’s not often that film festival attendees watch the official selection from boats. But that was the case at the Muyuna Floating Film Festival, which wrapped up on Sunday in the Peruvian Amazon. For 10 days, the festival showcased films about tropical forests and the communities that live in them for a largely Indigenous audience. Many attendees had never seen a film on a big screen before, The Associated Press reported.

Movies from Peru, Brazil, Panama, Thailand, and Taiwan were screened at the event; one local production from Peru was an animated story of a cicada that helps regenerate the forest. The event aimed to pay tribute to Indigenous communities, “in which we believe lies the answer” to challenges such as climate change, co-organizer Daniel Martínez-Quintanilla said.

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In Focus: Mexico’s Big Moment

The closing campaign event for Mexican presidential candidate Xóchitl Gálvez is held at Arena Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico, on May 29.Azael Rodriguez/Getty Images

Mexicans vote Sunday in a long-awaited contest to see who will succeed President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and fill the country’s congress and local legislative offices.

Events during the campaign period itself have underscored the many challenges facing Mexico, especially high levels of violence. Local candidates were shot on both Tuesday and Wednesday at different events throughout the country. Mexico City consultancy Integralia calculated that 749 people connected to various races experienced violence ranging from threats to killings.

Meanwhile, multiple parts of the country have suffered water shortages and rolling blackouts, climate-related strains that are often exacerbated by poor infrastructural planning.

On the surface, these issues might seem to bode well for an opposition victory. But Mexican voters appear happy enough with the incumbent Morena party’s record on economic issues such as poverty reduction and minimum wage gains. López Obrador’s chosen successor candidate, former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, has held a strong polling lead throughout the campaign.

That doesn’t mean congress or local offices will see a Morena landslide, however, and observers are watching for the possibility of a strong opposition or third-party showing in those races. Accusations of election fraud—baseless or not—could be in store, too. During one of the presidential debates, Sheinbaum repeated a debunked claim that there was fraud in Mexico’s 2006 vote.

Once the dust from the election has settled, major economic and foreign-policy challenges will await the new president. Those include how to handle the dominance—and indebtedness—of state energy firms as well as trade relations with the United States, Rice University scholar Isidro Morales wrote in Foreign Policy this week.

The next president cannot ensure Mexico’s energy stability and meet its climate commitments “if she does not regain the trust of private investors that was shattered under López Obrador,” Morales argued.

Sheinbaum is a scientist, so she would presumably be sensitive to the country’s climate needs. But her polarizing sponsor’s shadow looms large, Ana Sofía Rodríguez Everaert wrote in Foreign Policy last month. If Sheinbaum wins, her “most daunting political challenge will be persona, not policy.”