Date

Tuesday, Sep 13, 2022
Expired!

Time

Bangkok
All Day

The event is finished.

Triangular Cooperation: A Modality for The Asian Century (GSSD Expo)

At the beginning of the 21st century, the word of the “Asian Century” spread. Long-term forecasts of the Asian Development Bank predicted that the region will likely generate more than 50% of the world’s GDP by 2040 and account for 40% of world consumption. The analysis concluded that in order to sustain Asia’s growth trajectory while approximating sustainable development, action is needed on three levels: the national action agendas, regional cooperation and collaboration, and the global agenda.

However, the current decade started with unprecedented global challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic posed a severe setback in the progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The economic recovery from the pandemic is now imperiled by the direct and indirect consequences of Russia’s invasion to Ukraine. The challenges are enormous and resources available for sustainable development to either developed or developing countries are under stress. Therefore, there is a pressing need to harness new forms of partnership for knowledge sharing and innovative thinking on global development. And due to their strong economic development in the early 21st century, some of the most important partners for global development hail from Asia.

Triangular cooperation, a relatively new modality promoting horizontal cooperation for sustainable development, sparks a lot of interest and debate in this context. It fosters capacity building and joint learning, it realizes on complementarities, it intensifies coordination and boosts synergy in resources allocation. The modality is on the rise globally with more countries using it strategically to engage with partners across the globe to drive sustainable development. Finding it adaptable and flexible, the development community engages in triangular cooperation across all regions, with the fastest growth in Africa and Asia. Data from the OECD repository of triangular cooperation projects indicate 13% of projects are in Asia and the Pacific, and almost half of the multi-regional projects involve an Asian partner.

These trends call for a discussion about how triangular cooperation can be a practical tool for Asian donors of South-South Cooperation in furthering the achievement of the SDGs in the “Asian Century”. The Asian region hosts pioneers of triangular cooperation, such as India, Indonesia, Japan and Thailand – who worked in triangular partnerships long before the modality gained global popularity. Topics that have been addressed include climate change mitigation, governance and institutional capacity, tackling inequalities, competition for finite natural resources, and fostering trade cooperation between countries and sub-regions in Asia. Therefore, there is a wealth of experience in Asia on triangular cooperation ready to be shared.

Since 2021, the Fund for Triangular Cooperation with Asia, an initiative launched by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), aims to foster innovative triangular cooperation initiatives among Asian partners through projects, capacity development and policy dialogue.

This side event jointly organized by the Fund for Triangular Cooperation with Asia and the Global Partnership Initiative (GPI) aims to reflect on triangular cooperation against the background of Asia’s development – once home to classic drivers of growth, but increasingly generating new drivers of transformation amidst a time of global challenges.

A dynamic and lively discussion will be encouraged, including time for interaction with the audience.

Please stay tuned for more registration and agenda via checking here.