序論　ＳＤＧｓ時代の開発援助・国際協力の実践と課題

抄録

In September 2015, “Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” with seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets was adopted at the United Nations General Assembly. This introductory paper discusses some of the issues around development aid and then draws lessons and challenges for both practices and academic research on development aid.

“Transforming Our World” describes that sustainable development has three dimensions—economic,social and environmental. In order to achieve the SDGs, various actors on development; bilateral and multilateral donors, developing country governments, civil society organizations, businesses, etc., are required to work on a broader range of issues. Understanding the linkages between development and other issues such as peace-building and environmental protection; and aid and other means of sustainable development such as trade and investment have increasingly become important.

“Developing countries’ ownership” and “partnership” have been emphasized among both academics and practitioners of aid in the past two decades. In reality, inherent in aid is the asymmetry of power between the donors and the recipients of aid. Understanding this asymmetry and considering how or whether this asymmetry could be overcome among the challenges for both analysts and practitioners of aid.

Increased diversity of aid actors is one of the recent trends. Especially the so-called “emerging donors” have not only increased their aid volume but have also gained influence in the development community. Major emerging donors such as China and India have been providing aid in a way different from traditional bilateral donors, and have refused to adhere to the norms and rules of bilateral aid created and developed by the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC). They argue that principles and norms regarding aid effectiveness should not be applied to South-South cooperation. How cooperation and policy coordination between increased variety of aid actors could be promoted is another big challenge for the aid community.

Finally, despite the global calls for enhanced international cooperation to achieve the SDGs, in several countries including Japan, there is increased alignment of aid policy with political and commercial selfinterests, Analysing the changes in donor priorities is another issue researchers on aid need to work on.