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1. Tomorrow’s Global Development Landscape: Mapping Trends and Reform Dynamics

Author:
Heiner Janus, Niels Keijzer, and Svea Koch
Publication Date:
01-2024
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS)
Abstract:
The key tools and governance approaches for international cooperation for sustainable development (hereafter, international cooperation) were set up in a markedly different time and age. International cooperation – with official development assistance (ODA) as the dominant means of implementation – remains key, despite being generally considered as no longer adequate for addressing today’s common and collective challenges. Despite numerous declarations of its growing irrelevance or calls for it even being beyond repair, the governance and reporting system of ODA has remained largely unchanged throughout its 60 years of existence. One reason is that there are few alternatives. Pandemic response and preparedness, climate finance, humanitarian aid, the United Nations development system as well as the budgets of the multilateral development banks all by and large remain dependent on ODA. New and additional sources of development finance have been slow to materialise and run the risk of remaining time-bound and ad-hoc, as illustrated by recent discussions on Special Drawing Rights, debt swaps and green bonds. While other actors, such as providers of South-South Cooperation (SSC), and non-governmental actors are increasing and gaining importance, they are only to a limited degree institutionalised. In the absence of transparent and coherent methodologies for monitoring their actions, concrete financial volumes remain hard to assess. This paper analyses structural factors of the institutional inertia in international cooperation and formulates expectations for where new reform impetuses might arise from. To this end, it maps and links key reform proposals for the global development system, with a specific focus on public financial flows consisting of three connected parts. The first part concerns current forms of and reporting processes for ODA, climate finance and SSC. These concern well-established, albeit path-dependent, forms of international cooperation with different types of multistakeholder settings and different levels of institutionalisation. Here, we do not expect fundamental reforms given various entrenched interests and expect that the nexus between climate finance and ODA will be the main driver for change. The second part of our mapping consists of what we call “global first” reform ideas. These ideas begin with a problem-oriented approach at the global level and aim at setting up new, universal financing schemes and redesigning institutional structures for that purpose. While the ideas in this category are still in their initial stage, we regard them to be particularly relevant for conceptualising the “demand-side” of reforms (i.e., “what would be needed?”). Here, we predict that the more ambitious reforms for creating universality of contributions and benefits at the global level will not materialise. However, these concepts play a key role in influencing the future orientation of specific existing (multilateral) institutions. The third part of our mapping entails positioning current multilateral and bilateral development organisations located between the first two parts. We observe that these organisations experience a gravitational pull towards both directions of reform, namely focusing on global public goods versus prioritising the (countries) left behind, often with competing incentives and trade-offs between national and global development priorities. We expect that a reform of bilateral development actors will lag behind in the broader policy field due to their domestic political constraints, whereas multilateral development banks will generate greater reform momentum (and be pushed by their stakeholders) as first movers.
Topic:
Development, International Cooperation, Governance, and Reform
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2. The External Dimensions of the European Green Deal: The Case for an Integrated Approach

Author:
Svea Koch and Niels Keijzer
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS)
Abstract:
The European Green Deal conveys the EU’s ambition to adjust and “green” its economic growth trajectory and become climate-neutral by 2050, as part of its contribution to the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals. While being ambitiously pursued within the Union’s own borders, the Green Deal also has strong external ramifications, as the EU leaves a tremendous ecological footprint in other parts of the world. The EU has referred to this “external dimension” of the Green Deal without further defining it, and appears to primarily understand it as a reflection of the internal strategies and as a call for the EU’s partner countries to follow a sustainable recovery trajectory similar to its own. A number of proposed EU domestic strategies (e.g. biodiversity, blue economy or farm-to-fork) contain chapters on global aspects, yet the EU seems to follow a predominantly sectoral logic to implementing the external dimension of the Green Deal. This approach has certain shortcomings. For one, it creates uncertainty for partner countries on how to adapt to the EU’s new rules, regulations and standards, and the extent of EU support for adjusting to this. It also creates a vacuum for member state engagement by means of their economy, finance, climate and foreign policies. Last but not least, it lacks clear governance mechanisms to address potentially conflicting policy objectives and to strive for greater coherence of domestic and external EU policies. Ultimately, the EU needs to define the different external dimensions of the Green Deal and promote an integrated approach. Whereas this applies universally to all partner countries of the EU, we focus in particular on developing countries in this paper. We consider these dimensions to be (1) promoting the Green Deal in bilateral and regional cooperation, (2) ensuring coherence and addressing negative spillovers, both in trade and domestic policies and (3) the EU’s global leadership in multilateral fora. Combining those three dimensions and governing them across EU institutions and member states allows for the external response to become an integral part of the EU Green Deal. Such an integrated approach allows the EU to claim leadership vis-à-vis other global powers, make credible commitments in multilateral fora for successful “green diplomacy”, and use its market and regulatory power to transform itself and others. In its bilateral relationships, the EU needs to strike a “deal” in the true sense of the word: together formulating and “owning” cooperation agendas that are clear in terms of what is in it for the EU’s partners and how the EU will cushion the potential negative adjustment costs of partners. Overall, the EU needs to avoid a “projectisation” of the external dimension of the Green Deal and clarify how the different Commission services and member states aim to work together to deliver the Green Deal, including through its various external policy areas, of which development is just one.
Topic:
Climate Change, Development, European Union, Economic Growth, and Green Deal
Political Geography:
Europe