UNCRD LAC Office

Horizontal/South-South Cooperation Programme on Capacity-Building for Integrated Regional Development Management in LAC

• Background, Objectives, and Components
• Achievements and Status of Implementation
• Activities

Background

The UNCRD LAC Office supports the Bogotá-Cundinamarca Regional Planning Board (RPB) as its technical secretariat in the implementation of the project, "Building Institutional and Technical Capacity for the Integrated Regional Development of Bogotá-Cundinamarca". The B-C Project has provided the UNCRD LAC Office a unique opportunity to add to its experience and depth of knowledge on building capacity for integrated regional development management, in order to draw valuable relevant lessons and devise with integrated regional development models for possible future replication. The project is considered an innovative practice that has attracted the attention of public administrations and regional development institutions in Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, and Brazil, which wish to learn from the experience.

Objectives

Derived from the experience and lessons learned in the implementation of the B-C project, UNCRD initiated in 2004 a South-South Cooperation Programme for Latin American countries. The programme is centred on the creation of a network of collaboration and exchange among Latin American regions interested in integrated regional development management, with multi-stakeholder participation. The overall objective is to enable and support the organization, participation, training, and technical assistance of key governmental and private sector/community stakeholders, so that they themselves can jointly identify common issues, and problems, and develop action plans to articulate the set of activities and priorities from which the various entities will be coordinated.

Project Components

1. Interregional workshops, aimed at the exchange of information, knowledge, and experiences among participating countries, and lessons learned from practical experiences; identification of demands and priorities, and possibilities of technical cooperation support.
2. An international training programme on integrated regional development management through the network of collaboration, to efficiently respond to the increasing demand of the regions to support capacity building for integrated regional development management, which can be offered to all interested countries. This programme is mainly based on the experience and lessons learned in the development of the B-C Project, and other initiatives implemented by partner institutions and UNCRD.
3. City/Region-specific workshop, custom-tailored to the specific needs of each participating region, and based on the particular set of issues. The workshops are aimed at generating concrete action plans. Given each particular case, the assistance is directed towards implementing integrated regional sustainable programmes, including strengthening the capacity of planning and management institutions.
4. Interactive web page. The interactive web page aims at catering to the broad need of information dissemination and sharing among interested and/or participating regions. The web page should be continuously updated with relevant information and experiences in the areas of integrated regional development management from various sources. In addition, essential learning materials prepared for, and resulting from, the workshops are made available through a documentation centre that forms part of the web site.
5. International initiatives. Beyond the regional dimension, there is clearly a need to ensure that the Latin American regions benefit from the global (i.e., Asian, and African) experience on integrated regional development management and by the same token that the perspective of the Latin American region is taken into account in global forums where similar challenges are being discussed.