This informal workshop is organised in the context of a joint research project between by Ewha Womans University and the German Development Institute, which explores synergies between Korean and German development cooperation and their wider multilateral engagement. The aim of this workshop is to take stock of the current challenging global environment in which both countries seek to promote global sustainable development. Korea and Germany are key actors in this area both due to their strong commitment to the Paris Agreement and 2030 Agenda, but also since as export driven developed economies they strongly benefit from and depend on continued global stability and development.

To facilitate dialogue and frank exchange, the event will convene a small group of around 20 participants – representing government, research and civil society – and will not be recorded. The second panel is timed to allow for additional virtual participants to join from Germany. After the workshop, the organisers will produce and circulate a chair’s summary presenting the main reflections and ideas that were shared, without attributing these to the participants or the organisations they represent.

Final agenda

12.30hr: Participants arrival

13.00hr: Introduction and welcome

13.30hr: Crisis response versus prevention: taking stock of changing narratives on development and the provision of global public goods First input: Niels Keijzer (German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik, DIE) Second input: Min Joung Park (Sookmyung Women’s University) One characterising feature of development policy since the 1970s has been its commitment to supporting long-term change processes in developing countries. During the past and present decade, this essential feature of development cooperation has come under pressure due to an increasing political demand to adapt and respond to key global developments and crises, in recent years including global financial stability, human mobility, pandemics and most recently the war in Ukraine and its emerging global consequences. These pressures have resulted in competing narratives that seek to both generate public support for and control over the resources available for development cooperation. A related challenge, perhaps best illustrated by 2030 Agenda, is that that the number of goals that development policy is expected to contribute to has expanded at a faster pace than the instruments in its toolbox to pursue these.

15.00hr: Tea and coffee break

15.30hr: International climate versus development finance: overlaps, synergies and competition
First input: Thomas Kalinowski (Ewha Womans University)
Second input: Suh-Yong Chung (Korea University)
The new German federal government’s coalition agreement presents both ambitious climate action objectives ‘at home’, as well as commits to achieving and gradually increasing its contribution to the USD 100 billion international climate finance target committed to in the 2015 Paris Agreement. Similar levels of international ambition have been shown by Korea, which in addition to its considerable bilateral contributions hosts the Green Climate Fund as a key contributor to international climate action. Yet the increasing and competing demands on development finance as discussed gives rise to a need to consider the extent to which development and climate action finance are mutually supporting or competing. One additional question is that the competing development narratives make that it is not straightforward to determine where development finance ends and climate finance begins.   

17.00hr: Identifying prospects for Korean-German networking for global development
The two first sessions have respectively looked into the global situation and wider challenges, and zoomed in to international climate action and development finance as a specific area of concern shared by Germany and Korea. This closing session will seek to identify key topics and questions that are of mutual interest to German and Korean policy and academic networks, so as to inform the further engagement in the context of this project.  

18.00hr: Dinner for all participants at a location near Ewha Womans University (location t.b.d.)