Influence of International Cooperation on Local Sustainable Mobility in Latin America. Case of Cuenca, A City to Live

• In Event: Sustainability, volunteers and NGOS

Abstract

This research analyzes how international cooperation, such as grants and technical assistance from the third sector to the local government, influences the implementation of local sustainable mobility programs in Cuenca, a city in Ecuador, Latin America. We consider Portela and Neira’s (2012) hypothesis that international cooperation, in the form of Official Development Assistance, improves the quality of networks, increases trust and facilitates norms with local governments. Plus, recent works have pointed out the diversity of sources for civil society in local contexts, which are the result of interactions between local governments, foundations, philanthropy as well as non-traditional sources for funding and distribution of activities in international cooperation programs (Salamon et al., 2023).
Cuenca’s local decentralized government was chosen as the case study: It considers urban mobility a policy priority, amidst budgetary, sanitary and security crises that have made program implementation in Ecuador a challenging task. An explanatory sequential mixed design was carried out for this research (Creswell and Plano-Clark, 2017). In the quantitative phase, descriptive data regarding the number of mobility international programs and its amount of investment in USD was collected from 2015-2020. Researchers’ main sources for this data were taken from the Ministry of International Relations and Human Mobility from Ecuador. Through the data collection process, researchers identified an international German agency with the highest number of projects and funding of mobility programs in Cuenca, Ecuador. This led to the qualitative phase, in which agency and government workers were interviewed.
Results highlight that the German international agency has taken an increasingly leading role, as it orients Cuenca’s local government towards sustainable, effective and efficient programs and funding for mobility, leaving conventional bureaucratic procedures. The international agency’s leadership role is attested as it coordinates and establishes cooperation initiatives with other local civil society organizations and public offices regarding mobility issues in Cuenca. Academia and civil society’s participation in local mobility programs in Cuenca, due to the agency’s articulate efforts, presents evidence for the articulation effects that international cooperation provides for sustainability goals. Dialogue between the international agency and the local government has made mobility a priority of their policy agenda. It provides a clear scenario in which international cooperation fosters the political will to make mobility a policy goal. Findings support the aforementioned hypothesis regarding the effects of international cooperation. Plus, there are three key aspects to consider when strengthening networks, trust and rules: a) the political will and interests of the local government that receives international cooperation, b) the generation of effective bonds between cooperation agencies and local governments, and c) that development programs ought to be anchored to sustainable development goals, as it provides a shared language, understanding of a problem and objectives for cooperation between civil society and government.

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Authors

• Maria del Carmen Zenck, Universidad Casa Grande

• Jose Daniel Merchan Naranjo, universidad casa grande

• Michelle Gaibor