The characteristics of the UNDP ART Global Initiative
Building on the pioneering experiences of previous cooperation programs such as Prodere in Central America and PDHL in Cuba (Carrino, 2005), the UNDP ART Global Initiative5 was established in 2005 with the aim of promoting a territorial approach to SHD for the achievement of the MDGs.
Under the coordination of the UNDP Geneva/Brussels Representation Offices, the ART Initiative promotes the implementation of national Framework Programs. It seeks to empower Local Development Systems (LDSs) and local governments to achieve SHD through dynamic and iterative processes based on dialogue between actors within and across territories. In addition, the initiative aims to facilitate the articulation of national decentralization and de-concentration polices and to assist different international cooperation actors with territorial development processes. In other words, the objectives of ART are to enable processes that improve articulation between the local, national and international levels, to promote a more effective use of internal and external resources and to foster sustainable partnerships between territories and global networks for development cooperation.
Building on Agostinucci and Biggeri (2012a), the following six features characterize the ART Initiative:
1. Territorial - It concentrates on the meso level, selecting for each country the most appropriate territorial scale in order to work on connecting different governance levels and sectors.
2. Multilevel - It focuses on the horizontal integration between actors, resources and functions within and across territories and the vertical articulation of territories in relation to national and supranational institutions (see Chapter 3).
3. Knowledge and partnership based - It promotes exchange and dialogue between and within territories for knowledge creation and diffusion, as a basis for cost-effective cooperation processes and mutual learning.
4. Demand-driven - It challenges supply-driven and project-based cooperation by articulating local needs in participatory and locally owned planning processes as a basis for mobilizing and aligning the support of external actors, and building synergies and complementarities around identified priorities.
5. Integrated and holistic - It promotes the integration of socio-economic and environmental dimensions and different actors' functions and mandates within structural actions in specific thematic areas, as an alternative to vertical or sectoral approaches and fragmented interventions.
6. Catalytic - It acts as a platform for partnerships, facilitating the interaction of local actors among themselves and with external partners (decentralized cooperation actors, donors, other local and national governments) in order to strengthen their capacity in fulfilling respective mandates.
The range of actions undertaken by national ART Framework Programs include those that (i) strengthen local and national capacities to develop integrated territorial diagnostics or strategic plans, so that international cooperation actors can meet the demands of the territories; (ii) coordinate multi-sectoral actions, instead of taking the traditional fragmented approach to cooperation; (iii) foster complementarities between different cooperation partners and programs, to support national development strategies (e.g. the platform for the MDGs) or decentralization policies pursued through local development plans;6 (iv) flag decentralized cooperation as a tool to promote the role of local authorities within the strategy of decentralization and de-concentration (EC, 2013b); (v) contribute to reinforcing the integration of the thematic areas (e.g. local economic development, water, social services and climate change) within each country's MDG platform at the local level; (vi) support institutional responsibility and civil society's capacity to propose and innovate; and (vii) promote the exchange of best practices, innovations and South-South cooperation experiences.
In other words, ART supports local stakeholders with the process of their empowerment and coordinates external actions to sustain territorial SHD processes, thereby enlarging the opportunities of LDSs to function. Thus, the theoretical innovativeness of the ART Initiative lies in simultaneously facilitating processes to increase participation, reduce fragmentation, strengthen ownership and align multilevel actions to expand the well-being of territorial communities. At the same time, it works to mainstream the approach to international cooperation within the UN system itself7 and overall in the global debate through partnership-based dialogue and the strategic use of decentralized cooperation as a catalyst of transnational consensus building on the needs of several LDSs (UNDP ART, 2011).8
4.3