International Development Cooperation

Crisis, Adaptive Resilience, and Trends

Abstract

International development cooperation (IDC) faces a structural and systemic crisis that hinders the achievement of its objective: the development of poor countries. Global collective action faces challenges in the context of a multi-crisis in contemporary international society, characterized by the convergence of phenomena such as regional military conflicts, climate change, food insecurity, and forced migration, among others. Furthermore, international relations are witnessing a weakening of multilateralism in the face of the rise of nationalist right-wing and far-right governments that view IDC as an unnecessary expense compared to the priorities of their populations. Consequently, Official Development Assistance (ODA) resources, the main component of IDC, are unlikely to reach the proposed target of 0.7% of GDP committed by donor countries.The essay argues that IDA has been and must remain an indispensable complementary mechanism for addressing common challenges in an increasingly integrated and interdependent world driven by economic, commercial, cultural, and political globalization, a world in which individual efforts, while relevant, are insufficient to resolve systemic and global problems such as climate change and transnational organized crime. However, global collective action must be guided by the principles of democratizing the international development cooperation system and recognizing differing capacities, given that profound structural inequalities persist among countries and peoples.