OVERVIEW

• Challenges of Globalization
• Impacts of Globalization on Development
• Future of International Cooperation
• UNDP’s role in Capacity Development

• Volatility is now the norm of the global financial markets, instigating economic and social instabilities in many parts of the world.
• The power of IT is so great yet the capacity of a few rich people to spend is limiting expansion of markets.
• Few industries around information technology can generate revenues commensurate with speed of transformation. In the meantime, non-skilled labors are increasingly losing jobs to machines and computers.
• ILO reports that 1 billion people are currently unemployed….There are less and less opportunities for more and more people.
• With break down of national boundaries in economic activities, there is massive exploitation of "public goods" such as natural resource endowments and intellectual property, especially in the South, where no sophisticated mechanisms are in place to protect them from external forces.
• The world’s dominant consumers are overwhelmingly concentrated among the well-off -- but the social and environmental damages from the world’s consumption fall most severely on the poor.
• The traditional driving forces of power, i.e., authority and legitimacy, are now being questioned. The economic power of a few is transforming cultures of the world all over, through implicit economic hegemony which imposes the culture of rich and famous.
• At the same time, the simple equation of free market = democracy no longer applies as globalization fundamentally challenges the mediative role of the State vis-à-vis external pressures. The combined effect of the global fluidity of finance capital, the growth in FDI, and the emergence of global corporations undermines the economic sovereignty of States and democratic nature of decision making processes.

A. From Comparative Advantages to Competitive Advantages

• Measures of "competitiveness"?: increasing financial flows & market speculation
• Global mobility: one big globalized market for skilled labor with multi-locational job opportunities
• Tougher time for unskilled labor: changing labor/capital relationship
• Changing values: natural/physical assets vs. knowledge assets
• Winning factors: positioning, seizing opportunities, and strategic capacity
• rapid conversion: ability to transform oneself to meet the ever changing challenges
• Under more sophisticated rules: new trade regimes, new forms of protectionism, copy rights

• Changing definition of life: DNA, genetic modification, etc.
• mathematical quantification capacity (e.g., a customized car vs. Ford Model T): no more copy cat!
• How to cope: new organizational methods needed
• Decentralization of knowledge: central authority in crisis
• What’s going down?: cost of networking/time and energy it takes to access information
• What’s going up?: speed & pace
• Take change as a given; stability is a premium driven by productivity patterns (and the way we measure it)

 

 
 

• There are questions on the record, mandates, roles and performance of key financial institutions.
• There are strong calls to reform the mandate of all institutions in the world in view of the speed of events and changes.
• Monetary known policies cannot cope with the sophistication of current financial flows. There are emerging trends of self-regulation of capital markets that do not involve States.
• After a period of de-regulation, there is an increasing move to instill new global regulations, a move which is not necessarily driven by government entities.

• Is ODA concept outdated? There might be a need to think its replacement through new Global Social Responsibility involving actors other than States.
• Shape new (or revived) global institutions which will manage the process of globalization through involvement of various partners.
• Adopt pluralistic approach with countries which face the challenges of globalization.

(no more of the uniform "prescription")
• UN requires capacity to address core issues of economic and political governance. First step is to claim back its role in development thinking.
• UN must take advantage of the momentum gained from reform pressures on the UN and the Bretton Woods institutions. UN should ensure that every intervention and reform initiative takes cognizance of the UN’s role in globalization.

Capacity Building

• It was UNDP’s trademark...
• UNDP lost institutional memory
• In the meantime, others ran with it (giving a new boost to the concept)
• UNDP rediscovers the concept when others talk about it
• Now, we need to re-center UNDP’s role around facilitation/brokerage and advocacy

• retention
• reverse brain drain
• retraining
• conditions of service
• empowerment
• management skills
• strategic planning

• participatory methods
• process consulting
• new forms of reporting
• negotiation skills
• feedback

• networking
• web capacity
• appropriate IT solutions
• knowledge-based systems

(knowledge intensive)
• organizational systems adaptation

• new partnerships
• new packaging
• new formulas for funding
• new actors

• There is a need to move from capacity building (a still over-used, charged, old concept) towards something fresher and linked to new forms of capacity development.