Coordination of work between the United Nations and international cooperation agencies faces many points of improvement for Latin America and the Caribbean
— Gonzalo Diéguez, executive director of CAGG and member of the Honor Committee and the Support Committee, agrees to answer a question from Luis Vélez Serrano of PuntoLatino on the subject of the VII Podium.
He is currently the executive director of the Centre for Global Growth Advocacy (CAGG) located in Geneva, where he manages technical assistance and financing projects from European cooperation and UN ecosystem agencies for think tanks in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay, Ecuador and Panama.
He holds a degree in Political Science from the University of Buenos Aires (summa cum laude). He completed postgraduate studies in Public Policy as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and a Master’s in Administration and Public Policy at the University of San Andrés.
He is a professor of undergraduate and graduate courses in political science and public policy at universities in Argentina, Spain and Panama and has published various articles in scientific and academic journals and chapters in specialized books for Argentina, Chile, the United States, Spain and England.
— Gonzalo, in your opinion, what are the priorities in terms of sustainable development in Latin America?
— Development priorities for Latin America and the Caribbean are numerous and diverse.
Some are closely related to long-standing problems. Others are associated with relatively more recent socioeconomic and environmental phenomena, and all of them coexist simultaneously.
This heterogeneous agenda covers a wide range of items: from the objective of reducing social inequality (the region continues to be the most inequitable place on the planet, accentuating disparities after the socio-health crisis of the Covid pandemic: UNDP 2019, ECLAC, 2020), to the transversal incorporation of the gender perspective in public policies to mitigate situations as different as the flow of migratory movements or counteract some of the adverse effects of global warming.
Talking about the sustainable development agenda in Latin America and the Caribbean involves the enormous challenge of addressing problems of complex interdependence that sometimes feed back into each other in a dynamic and different way (wicked problems) .
These problems are sometimes extremely difficult to resolve, given that they have contradictory and changing characteristics, which makes it even difficult to identify them with analytical precision and methodological rigor.
An example to illustrate the above: in different countries in the region, a woman born in a poor neighborhood has a life expectancy 18 years lower than another woman born in a rich area of the same city.
But the issue does not end there, since development problems are multidimensional in nature.
The great Latin American disparity also extends to the skin color or ethnicity of its population: if that woman is of African descent or comes from indigenous communities, she is more likely to be poor, to suffer more from the effects of climate change – due to the precarious housing in which she lives – and has less chance of finishing school and thus obtaining a formal job that guarantees her sufficient monetary income.
The development priority agenda in Latin America and the Caribbean must address the challenge of (re)building a better future: which translates into promoting more inclusive, sustainable and resilient economies (OECD, 2021).
—And what are the main roles of the multilateral approach to these priorities?
— The United Nations multilateral approach establishes a proactive agenda oriented toward the development of Latin America and the Caribbean, primarily through the historic active work of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), among others.
In recent years, the role of UN Women, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) have gained visibility and growing critical influence in numerous countries in the region.
However, the coordination of the work agendas of the organizations in the United Nations ecosystem with the funding provided by international cooperation agencies still has many areas for improvement,
especially in the synchronization of funding and execution of projects in the Latin American and Caribbean region.
This problem has been pointed out on numerous occasions in various ECLAC reports. Although 28 of the 33 countries that make up the region are considered to be middle-income, the role of international cooperation and multilateral agencies continues to be very relevant, and is even clearly decisive for some of the thematic agendas.
— What topics do you recommend we address in the post-podium interview round?
Among the many problems facing the region, the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic brought to light the challenges of connectivity and the digital transformation agenda.
According to this report prepared by CAF (¹), 32% of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean (244 million people) do not have access to internet services and at least 77 million people living in rural areas lack connectivity with minimum quality standards.
Considering that the international cooperation and financing agenda puts the focus of priority attention for the next 5 years on the green and technological transition, I understand that this diagnosis would constitute an interesting input to enrich the conversations that PODIUM proposes each year.
(¹) The_state_of_digitalization_in_Latin_America_in_the_face_of_the_COVID-19_pandemic.pdf (caf.com)
— Thank you very much Diego!