Development cooperation

Civil society organizations are facing increasing political restrictions all over the world. Frequently , these restrictions apply to the foreign funding of NGOs and thus curtail the space for external civil society support, which, since the 1990s, has become a key element in international democracy and human rights promotion. This so-called 'closing space' phenomenon has received growing attention by civil society activists, policymakers and academics. Existing studies (and political responses), however, neglect the crucial normative dimension of the problem at hand: As we show, the political controversy over civil society support is characterized by norm contestation, and this contestation reveals competing perceptions of in/justice and touches upon core principles of contemporary world order. Taking this dimension into account is essential if we are to academically understand, and politically respond to, the 'closing space' challenge. It is also highly relevant with regard to current debates on how to conceptualize and construct order in a world that is plural in many regards and in which liberal norms are fundamentally contested. Empirically, the paper combines an assessment of the global debate about closing space in the UN Human Rights Council with an analysis of a specific controversy over the issue in US-Egyptian relations.

Archintorno is a non-profit organization of young architects based in Naples, that has been promoting initiatives of development cooperation with indigenous communities in the Mexican State of Oaxaca since 2005. These initiatives involve universities, associations, local governments, and professionals in and outside Italy and rely on a didactic format, internationally known as Design-Build Studio, that includes the direct involvement of students from the Schools of Architecture and Engineering in designing and creating buildings in the developing contexts. Our projects aim at using local materials and resources through low-cost, repeatable technologies, that are also consistent with local climate, social, and cultural context. Decisions on how to realize the projects are the result of a careful, shared analysis of lifestyles, housing culture, and local construction techniques. The cultural exchange between students and local populations is another relevant factor playing a major role in these projects. Therefore, in the context of the current debate about different approaches to architectural design in international cooperation, the experience of Archintorno is in close continuity with the local vernacular culture. This article describes the strengths and weaknesses of the proposed approach through the analysis of the three cooperation experiences of Archintorno in Mexico. The topics discussed cover forms of participation and capacity building, project impact on the local community in terms of economic, socio-cultural, as well as environmental and landscape aspects, in addition to the transposal of technological and architectural innovations and may represent a starting point for discussion within the context of the community operating in this field.

El libro “La Agenda 2030 en Iberoamérica” recoge las principales contribuciones al seminario internacional que la Fundación Carolina organizó en 2019, con el patrocinio de la Fundación ICO y la colaboración del Centro de Desarrollo de la Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económico (OCDE), la CEPAL, la Secretaría General Iberoamericana (SEGIB), la Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (AECID) y la Fundación Internacional y para Iberoamérica de Administración y Políticas Públicas (FIIAPP). Su contenido gira en torno al “desarrollo en transición”, concepto inicialmente formulado por la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), la Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económico (OCDE) y la Comisión Europea. Este busca superar los esquemas clásicos de la cooperación al desarrollo y abrirse a nuevas modalidades, más simétricas y horizontales, basadas en el aprendizaje conjunto, el intercambio de conocimientos y la cooperación técnica.
El volumen, coordinado por el director de la Fundación Carolina, José Antonio Sanahuja, cuenta con la participación de un amplio elenco de especialistas europeos y latinoamericanos, tanto del campo académico, como de agencias de desarrollo y cooperación. Su contenido debate, entre otras cuestiones, la validez de los criterios de clasificación de países y de “graduación” por niveles de renta que se emplean en la asignación de los flujos de ayuda al desarrollo, y subraya la necesidad de replantear la arquitectura de la cooperación y rediseñar sus instrumentos para adaptarlos a los retos y fragilidades de cada país. Asimismo, reflexiona sobre las “trampas del desarrollo” que se observan en los países de América Latina y el Caribe, ligadas a la baja productividad, la informalidad laboral, la vulnerabilidad social, la desigualdad de género, los patrones de producción insostenibles y dañinos para el medio ambiente, o la desafección institucional.
El enfoque del desarrollo en transición sintoniza con el principio de la Agenda 2030 de “no dejar a nadie atrás” y considera que todos los países están “en desarrollo”. En efecto, la pobreza no se restringe a los países de menor renta, sino que se extiende a los de renta media; y el desarrollo sostenible supone también un desafío para los países avanzados, cuyos patrones de producción y consumo no son sostenibles, de modo que alcanzar los ODS exige un marco reforzado de gobernanza global.
Como se indica en el libro, América Latina y España —gracias a la labor de instituciones como la Agencia Española de Cooperación para el Desarrollo (AECID), o la SEGIB— están especialmente preparadas para aportar al “desarrollo en transición” su bagaje en cooperación triangular y horizontal, así como en cooperación Sur-Sur, toda vez que estas modalidades promueven una cooperación que impulsa el trabajo “entre pares”, el fortalecimiento institucional y la generación de relaciones de confianza mutua. En este sentido, el papel del conocimiento adquiere un relieve crucial en la nueva agenda de la cooperación iberoamericana. Una agenda que requiere incrementar la inversión en I+D, potenciar el rol de la educación superior, incentivar la innovación —así como su impacto en términos de bienestar y cohesión social— y articular sólidas de redes de conocimiento, en un esfuerzo donde el concurso financiero de las empresas y la construcción de alianzas inclusivas, centradas en las personas y el planeta, es indispensable.
El libro aboga por estrategias de cooperación que refuercen las instituciones y las políticas públicas en un marco de cooperación avanzada que supone una renovación del multilateralismo. Frente a la amenaza de una globalización en retroceso, el volumen llama a establecer desde Iberoamérica una visión compartida del progreso humano, levantada sobre la narrativa universalista y la acción colectiva que define la Agenda 2030.

The Bankwide Resettlement Review was initiated in 1992 to encompass all projects with resettlement in the Bank's portfolio between 1986 and 1993 and to assess consistency between policy and operations. The Bankwide review was assigned to the Environment Department in the Environmentally Sustainable Development Vice Presidency (ESD); the Environment Department established a Task Force to coordinate the review and carry it out jointly with the regional departments. Each of the Bank's operational regions and the Bank's Legal Department formed resettlement review working groups. All regions prepared comprehensive analytical reports on their resettlement portfolios, and these formed he basis of this report. Contributions were also received from the Bank's central Vice Presidencies.

The three objectives of the resettlement review were:
(1) To ascertain the scale of involuntary resettlement in the Bank's portfolio, and determine regional and sectoral trends and composition.
(2) To analyze ongoing resettlement programs for their quality, consistency with policy, and outcomes.
(3) To identify recurrent problems affecting performance, initiate midstream remedial actions, and prepare a follow-up strategy for addressing resettlement more effectively.

Rather than being carried out as a desk-bound and static stock-taking exercise this review was deliberately designed as a broad process of resettlement analysis in the field, carried out by the Bank's relevant regional and central units jointly with the Borrowers. The main product of this comprehensive review is not simply its final report, but the process that the review triggered throughout 1993 across the Bank and on the ground. The review process consisted of intensified field supervision, analysis of project preparation, appraisal, supervision, and implementation, on-site consultation with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), sectoral resettlement studies, development of new technical tools for resettlement planning, and a considerable number of joint remedial actions initiated by the Bank and the Borrowers for projects failing to meet set objectives.

The book is structured like a dictionary and as such presents 23 short contributions, each with a different topic and an author’s profile and disciplinary perspective. All letters aim to show how diverse, rich and old is the co-operative sector worldwide. All letters discuss explicitly or not the ability of the co-operative sector to contribute to growth and development. Taken together, the letters provide a multidisciplinary explanation of how co-op­eratives contribute to our life, how they have been doing so for a long time, and, through reinvention, might still do so for years to come. All letters position the role of co-operatives with reference to traditional firms but do so in a critical rather than a polemical or utopian way.



Questo libro è strutturato come un dizionario e come tale presenta 23 brevi contributi, ciascuno con un diverso argomento, scritto da autori con un background differente e una diversa prospettiva disciplinare. Tutti i capitoli ambiscono a descrivere quanto sia antico, ricco e diverso il settore cooperativo a livello mondiale. Tutti i capitoli descrivono esplicitamente o meno il peso del settore cooperativo sulla crescita e lo sviluppo. Presi insieme, i capitoli offrono una spiegazione multidisciplinare del contributo offerto alle nostre vite dal settore cooperativo, illustrano come così è stato da molto tempo e come potrebbe essere ancora a lungo attraverso il reinventarsi del ruolo delle cooperative nella nostra società. Tutti i capitoli descrivono le cooperative con riferimento alle imprese tradizionali ma fanno ciò in maniera critica, piuttosto che retorica o polemica.

A partir de 2016, la desaceleración del comercio mundial y
de los flujos internacionales del capital, así como las
restricciones crecientes a las migraciones internacionales,
han provocado la reducción de la interdependencia económica
entre las economías nacionales o proceso de desglobalización.
Esta situación, cuya proyección política es el
abandono del multilateralismo por Estados Unidos (EEUU),
se ha agudizado con la pandemia Covid-19, que ha puesto
en tensión el desarrollo de las cadenas globales de valor y
ha incentivado en los países desarrollados políticas industriales
para lograr autonomía estratégica. Todo ello permite
hablar de desglobalización genuina, que podría anticipar
una tendencia a la fragmentación de la economía mundial
en bloques.