Current Challenges and Priorities of the South in International Negotiation Issues

Vicente Paolo Yu

07/10/2013

Opinión

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Multiple challenges to development in the South

Developing countries today face multiple interlinked challenges – the financial, climate, and development crises. These are challenges that, in large part, affect developing countries more harshly than they do the developed countries.

Addressing the global economic crisis is still a priority, 5 years after it started. We need to continue to analyse how the recession has affected the low income and middle income developing countries, as well as how the “global recovery” brings its own problems and how developing countries can cope with these problems;

On climate change. We now have a very complex situation following the launch of a new round of negotiations in Durban aimed at reaching agreement on enhancing climate action by all countries in the mid-term (before 2020) and the long-term (after 2020). The key issue is how to combine the environmental imperative with equity so that the development prospects of developing countries are not compromised. The G77 and China have consistently called for developed countries to take the lead, under the Climate Convention, in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and to provide climate financing and technology access to developing countries to assist them in doing mitigation and adaptation actions;

On trade issues. In the run-up to the 9^th WTO Ministerial Conference, the drive by the WTO Director-General and developed countries to have a trade facilitation agreement-focused outcome as the core of the MC9 “package” could imperil the original Doha development agenda mandate. We also need to assess the development implications of free trade agreements like EPAs between North and South countries and how we can ensure that they do not throw up new obstacles to development;

The debate over intellectual property, innovation and their links to development continue to have a high profile, as developed countries seek to strengthen IP enforcement. Developing countries need to continue pushing for IP flexibilities so that IP will not hinder development policy but is put in its proper place;

Addressing the need to build a new international financial and economic system is going to be crucial, in order to ensure that the global economic system is more effective, transparent, legitimate, provides appropriate regulatory safeguards against excessive and speculative market behavior, and gives developing countries an increased voice in global economic governance;

The inclusion of a strong development agenda and the promotion of the development state at the national level and the international framework and cooperation that promotes it, with adequate policy space, is necessary as part of the post-2015 development agenda discourse in the UN system.

The post-2015 development agenda

These multiple challenges highlight the continuing key developmental objectives that developing countries have with respect to the post-2015 development agenda; especially:

1. Rapid and sustained economic growth

2. Industrialization

3. Full employment

4. Greater distributional equity

5. Environmental sustainability

These encompass all three areas of sustainable development – economic and social development and environmental protection.

The post-2015 development agenda should not simply extend the MDGs, reformulating the goals, dropping one or two and adding a few in areas such as environment and human rights. It should focus, instead, on global systemic reforms to remove main impediments to development and secure an accommodating international environment for sustainable development. International action for systemic reforms should be formulated as explicit commitments with appropriate time frames, going well beyond the generalities of Goal 8 of the MDGs.

South-South policy coordination on post-2015 development agenda

Getting a good, systemic, post-2015 development agenda discourse going will very much depend on the extent to which the G77 and China, in New York, in Geneva, in Nairobi, and elsewhere, is able to coordinate its messages, craft its narratives, and present a coherent and systemic approach that will result in specific reform commitments on global issues.

UN processes face the danger of fading away through the lack of proper follow-up. An example is the 2009 UN Conference on the Financial Crisis that was organized by the UN General Assembly. It made a good start, took up various issues of importance to developing countries, and made some suggestions regarding the kind of issues to be explored in the reform of the financial architecture. A follow up process was agreed but this process has now essentially become side-lined, devolving into one or two diplomatic meetings a year in which countries make statements, but where no further follow up or implementation actions with impact are undertaken.

The post-2015 development agenda should not suffer the same fate as the UN’s discourse on what to do about the global financial crisis.

G77 and UNCTAD

Within the United Nations, UNCTAD’s role is particularly important for the G77 given UNCTAD’s historical ties with the G77 and the long-standing tradition of critical and empirical policy research that has been done by UNCTAD on global development issues.

As such, it would be necessary for UNCTAD to continue the visionary and strategic leadership that is needed to ensure that UNCTAD’s policy research role and contributions to macroeconomic development policy thinking within the UN system is not diminished.

This article is based on a speech given at a G77 and China Strategy seminar in Geneva, presented by the South Centre’s Coordinator on Global Governance issues.

Source: South Bulletin 75, 7 October 2013, South Centre. www.southcentre.org

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