Global cooperation and its importance and limitations

Global cooperation is very important for the development of the world. Global cooperation has led to the development of many global and regional organizations and the development of the world in economic, social, political and other terms. It reduced extreme poverty, reduced economic instability, helped improve education and brought many other positive effects in the world. All countries are benefited from global cooperation. But there are some flaws and challenges to global cooperation. Consequently, the impacts of global cooperation are not as required in economic, social and other terms. Increased global cooperation is imperative for the economic development of all and for addressing global problems and challenges.  

It is to note that there is global cooperation in many aspects. There is cooperation in addressing shared economic, social and other challenges in the world. Many economic, social and other organizations including the United Nations, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization were established and international conventions and treaties including Geneva Conventions were adopted for increasing global cooperation and addressing economic, social, political, environmental, public health and other challenges across countries. It fosters economic development, facilitates trades, improves social conditions, reduces poverty, increases the ability to reduce uncertainty and brings many other positive outcomes across countries. Consequently, the role of global cooperation in the economic, social and other sorts of development is thus far notable.     

No doubt, there are many economic, political, geopolitical, organizational and other challenges to increased global cooperation. A few notable challenges are a lack of sovereign authority, the potential incongruence between national interests and the importance of global cooperation, the extremely egoistic behavior of states, challenges related to the trust and reliability of cooperation among states, differences in the legal and regulatory frameworks of cooperation, the extreme desire of states to maximize their relative and absolute gains and the uncertainty of international cooperation. The lack of sovereign authority in the international arena that can make and enforce binding agreements is a significant barrier to the desired global cooperation.

Moreover, there are many other barriers to increased global cooperation. Limited resources or capacity to invest puts significant barriers to global cooperation among countries. Also, uncertainty regarding the future intentions of states, the higher costs of cooperation, a lack of effective communications and political factors play important roles. Higher cost of cooperation may lead different countries to refrain from global cooperation. But political factors of a country, or political indifference, often play a significant role in global cooperation. Moreover, some barriers can be more important than others but the importance of barriers depends on the type of cooperation and contexts. But challenges to global cooperation exist at the national, regional and global levels.

Because of many barriers, it remains unclear whether global cooperation is possible at the desirable level in all aspects. Global security and peace and economic cooperation are two important aspects in which global cooperation faces more barriers. In terms of international peace and security, cooperation is most challenging, even if many transnational organizations including the United Nations are engaged in maintaining and promoting international peace and security and can ensure peace and security on many grounds, because of geo-political rivalry and competition for powers among global powers. Also, economic cooperation is not possible at the desired levels because of geo-economic competition among countries at the global and regional levels, though many organizations are working for improving global cooperation on economic aspects and making significant impacts on economic development.

Yet, global cooperation is vital. No doubt, economic crises affect enormously. For instance, the economic crisis in 2008 heavily affected many in the world. Despite developed countries have the capacity to cope with most economic crises, less developed countries face more troubles. Recently, Sri Lanka was about to collapse in economic terms though it was eventually bailed out by the International Monetary Fund with a loan of several billion US dollars. Moreover, pandemics and other transnational crises affect many countries. The recent pandemic has led to an economic recession in many countries, along with the global shortage of medical supplies. Global cooperation helped not only to fight the pandemic but also to recover the economic loss.    

Definitely, global cooperation needs to be increased in a range of shared global challenges. In this respect, global economic crisis, global peace and security, prevention of global health challenges including pandemics, recovery from pandemics, the mitigation of climate change, global energy problems and other shared problems need to be given emphasis in global cooperation. No country can alone deal with global problems. But increased global cooperation needs to be ensured in mitigating not only shared global problems and challenges but also other problems and challenges including less prioritized challenges that may not affect many in the world but can still have notable effects. Also, global cooperation needs to be increased by developed, developing and less developed countries.

But effective measures are needed to increase global cooperation. In this respect, challenges at the national, regional and global levels need to be addressed as much as possible. But reframing development narratives to focus on shared challenges and creating more space for meaningful dialogue on the issues of shared interest are important. Increased and meaningful cooperation between the global south and the global north is also imperative. The uncertainty of global cooperation needs to be reduced. But better ways are imperative for increased cooperation among countries. The strengthening and development of financial and other institutions are important to effectively foster global cooperation and mitigate economic, social and other challenges among countries.

The emphasis also needs to be given to the development of economic conditions among countries. No doubt, geo-economic, geopolitical and other challenges make significant impacts on economic conditions in many countries. Also, ill-formulated economic policies can lead to the failure to generate the desirable economic conditions for many among countries. Effective efforts are important for economic development. Along with the improvement of economic conditions, global cooperation needs to be increased to deal with economic uncertainties. In this respect, it is important to develop an international economic cooperation framework with a special emphasis on the mitigation of economic crisis, foster economic cooperation coordination mechanisms, improve the global supply chain and facilitate the development of resilient economy across countries.  

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