Why Focus on LED and the Corridor?
Background
The Southern Balkan
region has been a troubled one with a long history of ethnic
and religious strife. It is
characterized as well by economic indicators that are the lowest
in Europe in terms of standards of living, per capita income,
unemployment and other measures of economic and social distress.
These difficulties, which have deep historical roots, came to
the fore in the ‘90s with the dissolution of the Eastern
Block of the Warsaw Pact and the breakup of the Yugoslav nation,
leading to the creation of five separate nations and to the violence
in Bosnia and more recently, Kosovo and Macedonia.
In trying to deal with this situation, the
international community, with its diplomatic corps, peacekeepers
and aid donors, has fashioned
a coordinated approach to assist the Balkan region and its
individual nations to overcome their animosities and differences
through
the development of democratic institutions and successful,
market-oriented economies. The Stability Pact for South Eastern
Europe demonstrates
the commitment of member states in the region, world powers,
international donors, and relief agencies to work together
to assist the region. Quoting from the Pact agreement, “the
countries of South Eastern Europe recognize their responsibility
to work within the international community to develop a shared
strategy for stability and growth of the region and to cooperate
with each other and major donors to implement that strategy.” One
of the major objectives of the Pact is to work towards “fostering
economic cooperation in the region and between the region and
the rest of Europe and the world, including free trade areas.”
The Potential Developmental Impact of the
Corridor
The Corridor VIII transportation project, although
it predates the Stability
Pact, directly supports the regional economic cooperation
that the Pact visualizes. It develops a system of transportation
that clearly would foster improved trade between Albania,
Macedonia
and Bulgaria. It would bring economic development benefits
to
the sub-regions and municipalities along its route and better
connect inland localities to ports on both the Adriatic and
Black Seas, allowing better access to raw materials and markets.
Corridor
VIII development is also a focus of the U.S. government.
For five years, the U.S. government supported development of
the
Corridor through the South Balkan Development Initiative that expired in 2001. However, renewed U.S. support for the corridor
has been shown through the subsequent Southeast Europe
Initiative program designed to continue stimulating road, rail and oil
pipeline development throughout the region, and expand to
include
similar
support for airports, energy and telecommunications development.
Why LED?
The process of Local Economic Development
is one that connects the people of a region to economic development
policy
and program implementation. Done right, local governments
that practice participatory local economic development
strategic planning play a guiding and supporting role in the
natural
business development
activity that will go on in any local free market economy.
Local governments play a central role in local economic
development, and can choose whether to play it in a passive or
active
way.
At minimum, local government provides for streets, highways,
public facilities and services, and a community environment
that
will affect business development and job creation. How
local government provides for business permitting, zoning and
regulation
of business can be a factor in creating a positive business
environment that attracts investment or stifles it.
The LED process, however, makes it possible
for ordinary citizens to be involved the economic development
of their
communities
through their local governments in a much more active
way. LED is a participatory process that involves a wide array
of public
and private interests, citizen groups and individuals.
Usually led by the mayor or other elected local leaders,
a commission
or like body of knowledgeable citizens representing various
business and community interests are given the responsibility
to develop
a local economic development plan or strategy. These
strategies
are then linked to other local initiatives and services
such as urban land use planning, transportation plans,
public
facilities and services. LED therefore becomes supportive of other
important developmental objectives as well. For example:
- A focus on LED fosters efforts towards governmental
decentralization. It is antithetical to government centralization
that is
so prevalent in many developing nations, including those in the Balkan region.
- LED supports civil society development. LED is a tangible process
through which local government, private businesses and
their interests, NGOs, labor interests and private citizens can work
together collectively to develop their economic environment.
- LED supports democracy building because it places mayors and
other locally elected officials at the center of economic
development policy-making for the community, where they belong.
- LED supports or affects community development activities and
essentially all development programs related to infrastructure,
public facility and social program delivery. All either
contribute to or are affected by the local economy and local economic development
policy, strategy and implementation.
Relating LED to the Development of Transportation Corridor
VIII
The Network’s focus on LED is designed to help give local
governments and private business associations that have a vested
interest in the Corridor’s development a voice in the decision-making
process, and to help them optimize the benefits of its development.
As is often the case with developing nations, the strategic planning
and project implementation of the Corridor VIII Project has been
carried forward with very little involvement of those who will
be most directly affected—the local communities and their
business entities. Mayors and private sector leaders are seldom
invited to “sit at the table” and often not
even consulted when important decisions are being made
on large infrastructure
development projects. This is true even though the localities
will often be called upon to implement those decisions,
and ultimately are the ones who will have to live with
the results, good or
bad. Vertical intergovernmental cooperation, which was
originally virtually nonexistent in the countries of
the region, and been
improving. But the situation is still a long way from
satisfactory.
The Role of The Network
The Corridor VIII Network serves
as a regional coordination mechanism for local interests
along
the corridor. It provides:
- assistance in intergovernmental relations through
an information sharing and coordinated advocacy program to
support further
international donor support for corridor construction and development,
- valuable knowledge sharing to and among members about current
Corridor VIII development plans and progress,
- assistance to localities in developing and coordinating local
economic development strategies that take the regional
Corridor VIII development project into account, and
- help to members in generating concepts for cross border development
projects and identifying funding sources for them.
In a letter addressed to AATDA in June
2003, Erhard Busek, Special Coordinator of the Stability Pact
for
South Eastern
Europe, responded
to a letter informing him of the activities of the
Corridor VIII LED Network. He commended the group for
our “regional approach
to this issue and the efforts you are making to ensure that local
communities benefit from the potential created by this vital
transportation project.” He went on to say that “the
close co-operation among local governments and communities stimulated
by your network reflects our view that considerable progress
is a factor in whether or not a locality is considered “business
friendly.” When municipalities create local economic
development commissions or similar bodies that are
open to many community
interests, it allows citizen input in determining how
the community, led by its local government, guides
its future
growth and development,
and provides an overall strategy for achieving desired objectives. |
