Good afternoon and welcome everyone to this side event organized by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), within the framework of the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development 2024.
In these few minutes of welcome and introduction to this event, I would like to explain how we at ECLAC view the reasons and objectives for which we have called you together today.
And for this I would like to begin with a short story.
In 2011, at a summit meeting of Asian presidents and heads of state, the Asian Development Bank prepared a document entitled Asia 2050: Realizing the Asian Century. The objective of the document was to analyze development trends in Asian countries and to propose scenarios and strategic lines for the next 40 years.
The document developed three scenarios for Asia: a high one, an intermediate one, and one of stagnation if not regression. The negative or pessimistic scenario, in case the Asian countries did not do their development tasks well, was to follow the path of Latin America and fall into the middle-income trap.
Latin America is presented as, and I quote: “a region with little dynamics, low levels of investment, modest increases in productivity, timidity in carrying out long-term projects, excessive inequality and a lack of pragmatism in debates between the role of the State and the market, where ideology predominates.”
The sad thing about this description from 13 years ago is that it is not far from reality. And what is more worrying is that the changes since then have not necessarily been for the better, a good number of them have been for the worse.
We continue to have a low capacity for growth, with very little growth in productivity, with too much inability to carry out long-term projects, with excessive inequality and with a lack of pragmatism.
For example, in the last decade from 2014 to 2023, Latin America’s average growth was only 0.8%. This is less than the 2% at which the region grew in the famous lost decade of the 1980s.
And it is not just an issue of the last decade: in the 30 years from 1950 to 1979 the region grew at 5.5% per year; in the following 30 years, from 1980 to 2009, it grew at 2.7%, less than half; and in the last 15 years at only 1.9%. In other words, the region has been losing its capacity to grow. This is the first of three development traps in which, from ECLAC, we see the region mired.
The second is the well-known trap of high inequality and low social mobility. And the third is fundamental to this event: it is a trap of low institutional capacities and ineffective governance.
The lack of foresight, strategic reflection, planning and execution capabilities for long-term programs is one of the main obstacles to overcoming the long-term structural trends that characterize Latin America and moving toward a more productive, inclusive and sustainable future.
That is why we at ECLAC are convinced that it is not enough to identify the areas of gap and make lists of aspirations about what to do; it is essential that we discuss the how, that is, how to promote the major transformations required by the development models of the region.
I will discuss this in more detail later. However, I would like to anticipate that the topic of how leads us to discuss and analyze at least three major related elements: the governance and effectiveness of public policies; the institutional capacities of the State, here we are talking about the TOPP capacities, technical, operational, political and prospective, of the institutions, that is, the capacities to think about the future; and the spaces for social dialogue to define responses to all the challenges. These elements greatly influence the capacity to manage the necessary transformations.
And it is in this spirit of strengthening institutional and governance capacities, including the ability to think about the future, that we at ECLAC are working intensively on these issues, this being the fundamental reason for organizing the First Regional Conference of Parliamentary Future Commissions last June (20 and 21).
What we did on that occasion was to launch a high-level initiative that aims to promote dialogue and collaboration to increase the capacities for legislative foresight and anticipatory governance by establishing a network of Future Commissions of the parliaments of Latin America and the Caribbean.
We would like to expand on this today and to do so, we have the privilege of having two great allies present, Senator Juan Antonio Coloma, President of the Senate’s Committee on Future Challenges, Science, Technology and Innovation and former President of the Senate of Chile, and Deputy Rodrigo Goñi, President of the Committee on the Future of the Chamber of Deputies of the Congress of Uruguay.
The experiences of Chile and Uruguay, the two countries in the region that currently have Parliamentary Future Commissions, allow us to better understand the role of these Commissions in Parliaments.
In a global context of rapid technological, political, social and environmental changes, it is essential that public institutions, as well as those in other sectors, have the capacity to anticipate future scenarios and provide better responsiveness, adaptiveness, resilience and innovation.
The time is right, because as you know, the United Nations Future Summit is approaching next September.
My thanks to each and every one of you and especially to the President of ECOSOC, Paula Narvaez for co-organizing this event with us, to Guy Ryder, Daniel Zovatto, Senator Coloma, and Deputy Goñi.
The leadership and commitment of all of them has been and is essential to open paths, fill these enormous spaces of opportunity, and demonstrate that the social construction of the future in our region is viable and feasible.
Thank you so much!
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