SOUTH URGED NOT TO REPLICATE OLD, UNEQUAL MODELS

United Nations, Sep 21 (IPS) - South-South cooperation is set to be a key issue during the three-day summit beginning today that will bring together some 140 world leaders to reaffirm their commitment to achieving the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015.

"It's very exciting to look at South-South cooperation in the context of what's happening here," said Olav Kjorven, U.N. Assistant Secretary-General and Director of Development Policy at the U.N. Development Programme. "[South-South cooperation] is a very important piece and we should pay more attention to it because it can help us accelerate progress toward the MDGs."

For all that is trumpeted about South-South cooperation, however, some worry that it cannot replicate existing inequalities between developed and developing countries, especially in the areas of trade and aid.

"There are many positive things about it, but I don't think it's unproblematic," Yao Graham, head of the Third World Network-Africa, told IPS.

With differential levels of development in the global South, within which is lumped together least-developed countries like Somalia and Afghanistan and emerging economic powerhouses like China and India, there are concerns that South-South cooperation can result in the same sorts of conditional aid policies that many developing countries decry.

"The criticism of India as a donor… is that it attaches the same conditions to its external aid that it refuses to accept as a recipient country, typically linking assistance to the purchase of Indian goods and services," writes Himanshi Jha in a report released last Friday by Social Watch.

And Monday, the U.N. Office of the Special Advisor on Africa released a report warning that financial interactions between Southern development partners may be potentially negative. The report, which focuses on Africa, urges the continent to adopt a more strategic stance and exercise greater control over its economic relations with its neighbours in the South.

"While some emerging economies have a strategy for Africa, Africa does not have a strategy towards the emerging economies," the report states.

Some 148 billion dollars worth of trade was conducted in 2007 between African countries and other developing nations – more than a 16-fold growth over the last two decades from 8.8 billion dollars in 1990.

While revenues to African governments have increased as a result of these relationships, the report also shows that the continent's manufacturing and construction sectors have been negatively affected by the opening of its markets to its Southern development partners.

Indeed, the outcome document that will be adopted by world leaders at the end of the summit pledges "to help strengthen and enhance the trade capacity and international competitiveness of developing countries to ensure equitable benefits from increased trading opportunities and to foster economic growth."

However, the document also recognises the importance of South-South cooperation, which is referenced a total of six times.

"We welcome the ongoing efforts to strengthen and support South-South Cooperation, as well as triangular cooperation," the document states. "We stress that South-South Cooperation is not a substitute for, but rather a complement to North- South cooperation," it adds.

A report released Sep. 16 by the MDG Gap Task Force about goal eight, global partnership, focuses on the impact of the world economic crisis on Official Development Assistance (ODA). World leaders have previously committed to allocating 0.7 percent of their gross national product (GNP) to development. Despite being at an all time high, ODA currently only stands at about 0.33 percent of GNP.

The report shows that the global financial upheavals have played a contributing factor to these shortfalls in aid commitments, of which a full 20 billion dollars is missing this year. As a result, despite comprising just a small share of total ODA, "Aid from non-DAC [Development Assistance Committee] and developing-country donors has become more important," the report states.

Around 10 billion dollars of assistance was provided in 2008 from developing and transition countries – a figure that is believed to have increased in 2009 and is expected to rise to some 15 billion dollars for this year. Saudi Arabia, Eastern European countries and Turkey are among the major emerging country donors.

It should be noted, also, that these estimates are partial, as they only represent money from countries that report their aid activities to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which compiles these figures. China, India and Venezuela for example, do not report their assistance efforts to the OECD, but are also considered to be substantial donors.

"But [South-South cooperation] is about so much more than financial transfers," Kjorven explained. "It's about sharing of knowledge and experience… The economic crisis has shown that a lot of the real innovation that is taking place in the world to deal with the crisis is happening in developing countries, and to bring the experience of successes in a particular part of the world – whether it's in Brazil with cash transfer programmes or other such examples – to other developing countries is one very effective and very cost effective way of getting progress on the MDGs."

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