Brussels, 15/05/2008 (Agence Europe) - Since its launch 15 months ago in Marseilles, the initiative for an international convention of regions in favour of a regional development approach, is growing. Interest from the United Nations and national governments has not got any less, and has in fact been validated. A long term vision is required for greater restructuring. The Latin American regions proposed their continent for the 3rd convention in 2010. Technical and sectoral debates on the EuroMediterranean partnership and the Art Gold programme helped to explain the level and quality of cooperation, how it can be improved and funded, and how private sector involvement can be encouraged.
The different workshops demonstrated a capacity for project-building, a spirit of solidarity, an industrial vision and determination to succeed. These are the main results presented to the press by the president of the Region of Tuscany, CPMR and the FGAR, Claudio Martini, at the end of the session of the second international convention for a regional development approach (EUROPE 9659).
Christopher Nuttall, the director of the platform for innovative partnerships (UNDP in Geneva) posed a number of questions on how they could make things work between states, the United Nations and the regions, and what was the global connection between the international equation, the state, local aspects, and citizens. Partnerships are gravitating in large numbers around a regional development approach, particularly through the Art Gold programmes in 15 countries on the five continents. Mr Nuttall emphasised that one of the most significant and most advanced examples was Northern Morocco. He added that this example illustrated the regional development approach in a new multilateral context. Cécile Molinier, the director of the UNDP Bureau in Geneva, explained that the Art Gold programme promotes, in the spirit of the Paris declaration and UN reforms, a means of cooperation that facilitates in the same regional area, the programming of joint initiatives led by different local, national and international actors eager to support the local development process in respect of the national context. Mourad Wahba, the UN representative in Morocco, pointed out that there were two aspects to this new multilateralism: the development aspect and the political factor, “which has not been mentioned enough”. He added that this new multilateralism “promotes local democracy and this democratic overture is essential”. Mr Wahba also posed the question of what should be “put in place as a capacity for managing this multilateralism”.
These results are compiled in the final declaration approved by the participants at the end of the second international convention session. The declaration “clearly associates the different levels of public authority to define and implement in development policies”, indicated a joint UNDP, CPMR, FGAR, PACA (Provence-Alps-Côte d'Azur Region) and Tangiers-Tétuan region press release. This declaration also indicates that: 1) the work carried out until now is helping to develop proposals for regional cohesion policy at an international level, in view of making the most of the opportunities provided by globalisation; 2) the UNDP will support the approach put forward by the European Commission, West African...Economic and Monetary Committee to work together with FGAR to promote the role of the regions in the West Africa economic development strategy (EUROPE 9658); 3) the president of the CPMR's inter-Mediterranean committee laid out the proposals from the Mediterranean on a regional cohesion policy on the two side of the Mediterranean as part of the perspectives outlined by the Euro-Mediterranean Union; 4) the secretary for federal affairs from the Republic of Brazil described the development of a new cohesion policy at Mercosur; 5) the regional development dimension as part of globalisation is shared by big countries such as Russia, China, India and Brazil, which have begun cooperation on this theme with the European Commission on the basis of the regional policy experience that has evolved in Europe over the past 20 years; 6) these efforts are deployed in vast national and trans-national areas and should, through the UN, discover what the conditions will be for their extension and full development. (G.B.)