The following is an excerpt from a blog published by the London School of Economics and Political Science. To read the full blog on the LSE website please follow the link below.
Why are partnerships important for sustainable development? Why can’t development actors simply go it alone? Why not strive to be everything for everyone: the “one stop shop” for development assistance? Guest blogger, Cameron Diver, Deputy Director-General at The Pacific Community (SPC), gives us an insight into the potential of partnerships.
In today’s crowded international development space and with extra pressure on traditional ODA, I am convinced that partnerships are vital. Partnerships provide the means to access strategic capability and networks that would otherwise take significant time and resources to develop. Partnerships provide greater visibility for some of the major sustainable development challenges we face today. Partnerships help reduce sterile competition and increase cooperation for the benefit of countries and their populations. Partnerships are platforms for resource mobilisation and leveraging of existing funding. Most importantly, partnerships provide a critical nexus between developing countries and development agencies, so assistance can truly be tailored to their context and priorities in the right balance with those expressed by development partners who are often geographically, and thus contextually, removed from the in-the-field reality.
The Pacific Community (SPC), the intergovernmental organisation I currently serve, was founded on partnership. In 1947, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, Australia, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States of America established SPC to “encourage and strengthen international cooperation in promoting the economic and social welfare and advancement of the peoples” of the Pacific. Seven decades later that partnership embraces 26 Member States, including all 22 Pacific Island countries and territories…
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Read the full blog on the LSE site here: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/internationaldevelopment/2018/05/10/should-we-compete-or-cooperate-in-international-development/