Networking for global development
IN this 21st century, globalisation brings speed in human lives, where networking becomes a major vehicle for promoting cross-border social movement, businesses and personal contacts. Even though the aim of globalisation is to foster development in the world under one economy, its critics argue that globalisation is a myth since it is failing to bring benefit for a large number of people as the gap between poor and rich is increasing.
That is why, every year the G8 summit -- a summit of richest nations of the world -- experiences protests by anti-globalisation groups, which regularly end in violence. Nevertheless, extensive media coverage of such anti-globalisation movements and networking among the groups via internet and mobile telephones, in order to form and promote anti-globalisation movement, indicates the globalisation of the anti-globalisation movement. Therefore, it will not be realistic to deny globalisation even from an anti-globalisation perspective in this 21st century world.
However, at the same time the existence of regional integration -- the European Union, North American Free Trade Area -- within this "globalised" world depicts that it is indeed a superficially globalised world we are living in. It is in fact more of a region-global world we are living in today rather than in a truly global world.
On the other hand, problems such as global poverty or global warming are global by nature. The responsibility, therefore, goes to the global policy makers who really can make a difference by addressing real issues and challenges for global development by going beyond regional dichotomy in the form of North-South or East-West distinction since there is a need for global policy integration.
Nevertheless, it will suffice to say that policy makers in this world are busy with politics rather then engaging in research. Here, the role of policy researchers becomes significant as they can generate knowledge, addressing the real problems that are hindering the development of this world, and brief policy makers with their evidence-based knowledge so that they can come up with more effective policy solution.
Networking among such researchers dispersed across various regions of the world can be a very effective vehicle for generating a global knowledge base for the global policy makers. Based on this simple theory, Global Development Network (GDN), an international organisation launched in 1999, by nature facilitates and supports networking among policy researchers in various regions of the world to promote global development.
The GDN has 11 regional networking partners -- CERGE-EI from Eastern and Central Europe, African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) from Africa, Economics Education and Research Consortium (EERC) from Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), East Asian Development Network (EADN) from East Asia, European Development Research Network (EUDN) from Europe, GDN Japan from Asia Pacific, Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (Asociación de Economía de América Latina y el Caribe) (LACEA) from Latin America, Economic Research Forum (ERF) from the Middle East and North Africa, Bureau for Research and Analysis of Development (BREAD) from North America, South Asia Network of Economic Research Institutes (SANEI) from South Asia, and Oceania Development Network (ODN) from Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific.
This approach of networking for development is, in theory, exciting since the GDN covers every region of the world through supporting regional partnerships. Moreover, it provides a global knowledge base for policy researchers through journals and other publications.
In addition, it promotes knowledge dissemination sessions for policy makers and policy researchers through organising annual conferences. However, a major drawback of such a concept is that it is really hard to measure to what extent and to what capacity policy researchers are in fact able to influence policy makers.
The failure of the recent Copenhagen Summit, which was considered as the most important summit after the end of the Second World War, shows that, despite the research-based evidence which stresses the need for integrated global action to mitigate carbon emission, regional and national interest could jeopardise global interest.
Similarly, even though the global policy makers are meeting in various summits to tackle issues to address global poverty, almost half of the world now lives on less then $2.50 per day according to the World Bank Development Indicators 2008.
Moreover, even though research indicates that the discriminatory non-tariff barriers imposed by the developed world for the product exporters from the developing world are in fact against the philosophy of global development, policy makers of the EU and North America continue to protect their producers at the expense of increasing poverty in the developing world.
Therefore, such a gap between policy researchers and policy makers requires to be eliminated, and only then can networking for development become an effective vehicle for actual global development.