“The Future of South-South Economic Relations” – Session 2

VIDEO: “The Future of South-South Economic Relations” Session 2

September 24, 2010

The Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future held an all-day conference on ‘The Future of South-South Economic Relations‘ as part of its Africa 2060 program of research. The conference was held on Friday, September 25, 2010 at the Hariri Building (BU School of Management) and brought together experts from a variety of fields and from across the world and an audience of some 45 to discuss different aspects of the changing landscape and the emerging dynamics of economic – and especially trade – relations amongst developing countries. The conference was preceded by a welcome reception for conference presenters on Thursday, September 24.

The second panel of the day was chaired by Prof. Strom Thacker of the Boston University Department of International Relations and included two papers focusing on Asia and a presentation on the South-South negotiation dynamics within the World Trade Organization (WTO). The presenters included Nagesh Kumar , Chief Economist at the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP), who looked at Asian trade and economic integration and identified key current and future trends; Shaheen Rafi Khan from the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) who looked at the impacts of South-South trade on conflicts by focusing on South Asia; and Rachel Thrasher from the BU Pardee Center who looked at the emerging trends of South-South negotiation cooperation in multilateral institutions, especially in the WTO. While the papers on Asian trade integration and on the WTO suggested trends of increasing South-South cooperation, the paper focusing on South Asia suggested that it is much more likely that conflict reduction will lead to trade enhancement, rather than the other way round.