SSC drives sustainable development

Each year, the United Nations Day for South-South Cooperation offers an opportunity to recognize a simple but powerful idea: countries facing similar development challenges have much to learn from one another. Knowledge, experience, and solutions developed in one part of the globe can often be applied elsewhere and adapted to different contexts through strong partnerships that take advantage of countries' respective strengths.

Today, this matters more than ever. Amid growing geopolitical fragmentation and compounding crises from climate change and biodiversity loss to widening inequalities, debt pressures, and rapid technological change, the world faces an annual $4 trillion financing gap for sustainable development, with official development assistance falling by 23 percent in 2025 compared to the previous year.

The Sustainable Development Goals — the UN's global blueprint to safeguard humanity and the planet by 2030 — are hanging on by a thread.

Yet, despite this difficult landscape, the world does not lack promising ideas.

Across countries, governments, communities, researchers and entrepreneurs are already devising practical responses to shared challenges. Too often, however, many of these solutions remain localized, isolated, or underfunded, limiting the potential scale of their impact.

South-South and Triangular cooperation can help bridge this gap. By bringing together practical experience, technical expertise, innovation and financing, it can help impactful solutions reach more people around the world, addressing challenges from poverty alleviation to disaster recovery.

In the case of China, its remarkable development journey over the last several decades has made it an increasingly critical international development partner.

Today, given its scale, what China does has the potential to affect livelihoods and economies around the world, as well as our planet.

By actively sharing experience and expertise in areas such as poverty reduction, renewable energy, digital innovation, and infrastructure, accompanied by affordable, long-term financing, China can offer valuable lessons and relevant resources that countries across the globe can benefit from, helping to advance collective progress toward the SDGs.

Indeed, China has already demonstrated a strong commitment to this goal. The Global Development Project Pool — a mechanism established by China to bring together development projects at different stages and help to connect promising initiatives with partners, expertise, and financing — now encompasses more than 1,800 projects with priority areas from poverty reduction and food security to climate and the digital economy.

And the Global Development and South-South Cooperation Fund, originally established by China in 2015, is backed by total funding of $4 billion, and has supported projects across more than 60 countries, benefiting over 30 million people.

UNDP's partnership with China has looked to leverage its experience and combine it with our global network across 170 countries and territories. Together with the government of China, UNDP has implemented close to 40 projects across 26 countries in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America, benefiting over 18 million people.

This cooperation has ranged from pandemic response and recovery to climate information and early-warning systems, helping climate-vulnerable communities better anticipate disaster risks.

Having previously served as UNDP resident representative in Bangladesh, I have seen first-hand the tangible effect of these projects on local communities in partner countries. Beneficiaries there received vocational training and productive assets including sewing machines, IT equipment, and business carts, to help establish or expand small businesses. As of June, the project had reached 387,000 people across six cities.

Such results demonstrate what South-South and Triangular cooperation can achieve when financing, expertise and country-level knowledge are brought together around locally identified priorities.

Moving forward, the challenge will be to build on successful projects and create stronger pathways for effective solutions to be adapted at speed and scale across different contexts through a broader cooperation ecosystem.

Doing this will require actions across three main areas:

First, further strengthen bilateral engagements with multilateral support through triangular cooperation.

Greater integration between China's bilateral development programs and the UN system's technical expertise, safeguards, and extensive on-the-ground presence can ensure alignment with international best practices and make cooperation more responsive and inclusive — particularly for communities at risk of being left behind.

Second, expand the range of partners involved. Engaging more institutions from across the globe, including from academia, financial institutions, technology providers and foundations, can unlock additional resources, ideas and capabilities while creating new opportunities for mutual learning.

Third, make innovation accessible and locally relevant. Projects that leverage digital, AI and green technologies must be accompanied by investments in capacities, institutions and enabling policies.

This will allow developing countries not only to adopt new technologies, but also to apply them responsibly and according to their priorities.

South-South and Triangular interventions are most effective when they are demand-driven and shaped through engagement with the communities they serve. This allows solutions to fit the local ecosystem and makes for more sustainable impact in the long-term.

Ultimately, the challenges the world faces today are far too complex and widespread for any single country to address alone. The only path forward is one that countries walk together — where international cooperation enables us to exchange knowledge, mobilize greater investment, and accelerate collective progress.

When China's experience and resources are combined with the leadership of partner countries and the expertise and global reach of organizations such as UNDP, proven solutions can travel further and deliver results at greater scale.

Realizing this potential will require sustained commitment from all partners to exchange knowledge, mobilize investment and translate successful approaches into lasting development gains.

Ultimately, the measure of South-South and Triangular cooperation will always be its ability to improve people's lives and help countries advance together toward a more inclusive, resilient and sustainable future.

The author is the resident representative of the United Nations Development Programme in China.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

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