Introduction: Rethinking international development cooperation
International cooperation programs and initiatives can play a significant operational role in promoting strategies for SHD at the local level (UNDP, 2012). In order to deliver tangible results, the whole system of international aid - including at local and territorial levels - requires innovative practices and mechanisms of ownership, alignment, harmonization, management of results and accountability.1 As we have seen, the evolution of the development paradigm (see Chapter 1) implies the emergence of urgent issues (such as poverty, the environment, peace and security, health, employment and civil rights) linking territorial communities to the global level (Sassen, 2007).
Consequently, traditional aid delivery processes (World Bank, 1998) based on project and supply-driven approaches are challenged (Mosley et al., 1991). In reality, the potential for international cooperation initiatives to expand opportunities to flourish depends on a range of institutions, goods and services that are localized in territorial societies.For these reasons, the idea that Development Effectiveness can be improved by linking international cooperation to local development and decentralization processes (UNDP, 2012) is now perceived as a valuable and appealing alternative with the potential to challenge traditional international cooperation practices (UCLG, 2009; DeLog, 2011; Kindornay, 2011; Bossuyt and Steenbergen, 2012).2 Nonetheless, some operational difficulties associated with international cooperation programs at the local level (e.g. from fragmentation problems to coordination issues) remain and deserve attention.
Overall, these concerns and insights suggest a rethinking of the system of international cooperation, focusing on processes that imply a different level of stakeholders participation, a shift to medium-, long-term programs, new tools for coordination and alignment (e.g.
for objectives and time concertation), as well as the introduction of innovative practices to foster accountability. Therefore, there is a need for an integrated strategic and operational framework able to capture these elements of change and address global issue by disentangling the importance of socio-political and economic processes at the sub-national level.This chapter presents a case study of an international cooperation initiative - the UNDP ART Global Initiative (Articulation of Territorial and Thematic Networks of Cooperation for Human Development) - through the lens of the SHD perspective at the local level and the evolutionary framework proposed in this book.
The UNDP ART Global Initiative (henceforth, ART) is a complex program based on multilevel governance (MLG) and a multi-dimensional, multisectoral and multi-stakeholder approach to promote SHD at the territorial level. This initiative sits well with the debate on international cooperation for the following three reasons, which represent the rationale for its selection.
Firstly, UNDP has been playing a key role in rethinking the development paradigm and international cooperation practices in terms of SHD. This is particularly true regarding ART, which provides a relevant case study for understanding how local capacities, territorial partnerships and co-development initiatives could be enhanced as part of a place-based human development strategy. In particular, ART has strived to operationalize the Development Effectiveness agenda at the local level by participating actively in several international meetings (such as the HLF-4 in Busan; the Second World Forum on Local Economic Development (LED); the UN working sessions on the post-2015 agenda and the definition of Sustainable Development Goals).
Secondly, having been implemented in more than 20 countries3 and several territories, ART has global relevance in terms of articulating multilevel efforts for the promotion of human development at the local level (UNDP ART, 2012).
Thirdly, the innovativeness of the ART Initiative has encouraged other institutions to consider it as a ‘platform for innovative partnership' (EU, 2009, p. 14). In addition, the direct knowledge and experience of the initiative by both the authors of the book4 facilitate the assessment of its processes. The research methodology was largely based on qualitative data collected in several countries through a combination of traditional and innovative participatory techniques (Agostinucci and Biggeri, 2012a), such as semi-structured interviews with key informants and stakeholders at different levels, and Structured Focus Group Discussions (SFGDs) with a matrix score (Biggeri and Ferrannini, 2014). Appendix 4.1 at the end of this chapter discusses this innovative tool for analysing complex development programs.
This chapter is divided into five sections. In the second section, the UNDP ART Global Initiative is briefly introduced, while in the third section it is compared with traditional aid policies. In the fourth section, the constituent elements and processes of the UNDP ART Initiative are analysed applying the Sustainable Territorial Evolution for Human Development (STEHD) framework developed in Chapter 2. The analysis emphasizes how the local and the global dimensions are connected and integrated along two main axes based on horizontal and vertical articulations of the initiative. The final section presents some concluding remarks and discusses the limitations of our study.
4.2