22. In focus: Colombia’s approach to targeted development co-operation through national planning
A strong national planning process is crucial. By this means, national governments establish priority areas for action and set targets, assign responsibility for their achievement to particular arms of government, create formal and informal mechanisms for inter-governmental co-ordination, and promote citizen participation and social dialogue. This In focus contribution on Colombia and its pioneering planning process illustrates the importance of complementary policies and institutional capacities to operationalise national plans. It also highlights how aligning national plans to global commitments such as the Sustainable Development Goals can support greater co-ordination across governments and more targeted development co-operation, and more effectively tackle shared global challenges.
The authors would like to acknowledge and thank Ana María Arias, Advisor, National Planning Department, Colombia and Sebastián Fernando Pulgarín, CONPES Group, National Planning Department, Colombia for their input into this case study.
Leveraging its strong national planning system, Colombia has pioneered an approach to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals that is meaningful in its context by integrating international goals into its national plans and priorities and by establishing formal inter-institutional mechanisms to co-ordinate and track progress.
Colombia recognises that aligning national priorities and global agendas is critical to address policy areas that transcend national boundaries. Development co-operation providers can learn from this approach to inform how they support countries in aligning their national plans with international goals to achieve more integrated development progress.
Colombia’s strong national planning system is a leader in the Latin America and the Caribbean region and a model for other countries to set and progress towards achieving national priorities. The key pillars of Colombia’s national planning system are:
Plans – The National Development Plan (NDP) identifies national priorities and needs, is used to determine budget allocations, and is the basis for measuring progress against key targets of national programmes.
Institutions – Key institutions include the National Planning Department, which co-ordinates the formulation and monitoring of the NDP. The Presidential Agency for International Cooperation is in charge of co-ordinating non-concessional funds and co-operation resources with key ministries and other involved institutions.
Inter-ministerial co-ordination mechanisms – One of the most important mechanisms of national co-ordination is the National Council of Social and Economic Policy, or CONPES, which designs and approves long-term national policies1 aimed at solving well-defined public policy problems identified in the NDP. The Colombian government also pioneered the establishment, by law, of an inter-institutional commission to co-ordinate and track progress at the national level towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In addition, the Equity Roundtable, a high-level committee convened and chaired by the President of Colombia, co-ordinates national government sectors and entities and develops strategies to increase social and productive inclusion of the population, and to reduce poverty and inequality.
Tracking and follow-up mechanisms – The government developed and uses the Sinergia system to monitor and evaluate the NDP.2
Colombia recognises that aligning national priorities and global agendas is critical to addressing policy areas that transcend national boundaries. It was the first country to incorporate the SDGs into an NDP through a dashboard of indicators, starting with the 2014-18 NDP.3 In the 2018-22 NDP, 98% of indicators were associated with one or more SDGs. The national policy of international co-operation establishes mechanisms to align national priorities with international commitments and agendas.
Each NDP is, first, a mechanism to foster inclusive dialogue across all stakeholders and helps build consensus. In this sense, they also contribute to overcoming the complex political economy of reforms. Indeed, the current 2022-26 NDP4 is being developed based on workshops (called binding regional dialogues) in which various stakeholders, including the private sector, civil society and popular associations, participate. Its main objective is to build a new social contract that promotes peace and well-being for all, and it will focus on transformations in five key areas: land-use planning, human and social security, human rights and food security, productive transformation and the fight against climate change, and regional convergence. The workshops and the transformations are fundamental steps towards building a new social contract aimed at ensuring the fulfilment of the SDGs.
At the same time, Colombia designs its NDPs with complex international challenges in mind. Tackling these global issues often requires different national-level institutions to co-ordinate and take collective action, a role that the country’s inter-institutional SDG Commission plays. The country’s NDPs – mid-term and multi-sectoral in scope, adaptable to a certain degree of legislative change, and a means to articulate lower level tools for longer range planning – also allow Colombia to align national plans with global agendas.
The country’s approach is especially relevant when it comes to global public goods such as the environment, as its strong planning process and the NDP enable both national and international-level co-ordination and the monitoring of results that can be fed into global results frameworks. For example, Colombia’s updated Nationally Determined Contribution identifies 132 co-operation needs, to be supported either through international development co-operation or possibly from the national budget, related to the green transition and climate change policies (Figure 22.1). These are related to financing, capacity building, and technology development and transfer.
The country’s approach is especially relevant when it comes to global public goods such as the environment, as its strong planning process and the NDP enable both national and international-level co-ordination and the monitoring of results that can be fed into global results.
Source: Based on Colombia’s Nationally Determined Contribution, updated in 2020.
The level of precision and clarity gained through the planning processes has allowed Colombia to make much more targeted requests to development partners and raised expectations about what development partners should deliver. Given that Colombia formulates and designs its NDP through participatory processes involving a wide range of stakeholders, international co-operation that aligns with the objectives of the NDP would strongly reflect national priorities.
Generally, where NDPs have integrated international agendas development co-operation providers can be certain that they are contributing to global agendas by aligning with the NDP. Such alignment must encompass all the providers’ instruments, including their international strategies and frameworks for co-operation, regional strategies, and country programme documents. All decision making on development co-operation should be done in consultation with the governments of partner countries. Financial and programmatic frameworks must also remain flexible to adapt to shifting conditions and global and domestic issues.5
Supporting country ownership means development co-operation providers must engage with co-ordination mechanisms. Such an approach helps mitigate the risk of duplication, misaligning providers’ interventions with country priorities, aid dependence and greater bureaucracy. In Colombia, the NDP, sectoral strategies (e.g. the National Strategy for International Cooperation) and other co-ordination mechanisms serve to better channel co-operation efforts. Laws complement these co-ordination mechanisms. For example, CONPES document 4088 of 2022 prioritises investment in seven projects designed to meet ten of the updated Nationally Determined Contribution objectives.6 Similarly, a law promoting low-carbon development (Law 2169/2021) outlined a plan (CONPES document 4058) for implementing and monitoring for low-carbon development, carbon neutrality and climate resilience.7 Within the financing and resource management component of the NDP, ministries are expected to identify financing needs and potential funding sources, among them development co-operation.
Supporting country ownership means development co-operation providers must engage with co-ordination mechanisms. Such an approach helps mitigate the risk of duplication, misaligning providers’ interventions with country priorities, aid dependence and greater bureaucracy.
Commitment to a demand-driven process of international co-operation could contribute to better, and more tangible, alignment with NDPs and, by extension, defined national priorities and needs. When those national plans and priorities integrate global goals, as is the case in Colombia, the country and its development partners are better able to tackle shared threats.
Notes
← 1. These policies are elaborated in what are called CONPES documents that articulate multi-sector public policies as well as financing for medium- to long-term investment projects.
← 2. Sinergia, the National Planning Department’s national system of evaluation of management and results, is both a platform of indicators to monitor public policies and a mechanism for assessing the results of the implementation of the NDP.
← 3. The dashboard was added after the SDGs were adopted in 2015. For more information on the history of Colombia’s NDPs (in Spanish), see: https://colaboracion.dnp.gov.co/CDT/Prensa/BasesPND2018-2022n.pdf.
← 4. For more information on the current NDP, see: https://colaboracion.dnp.gov.co/CDT/portalDNP/PND%202022/Bases-PND2022-2026_compilado-CEVC15-10-2022.pdf.
← 5. For more information on the relevance of better connecting national development planning with international cooperation see documents on Development in Transition, available at “Emerging challenges and shifting paradigms. New perspectives on international cooperation for development (cepal.org)”, and g2g9ff18-en.pdf (oecd-ilibrary.org)
← 6. The policy document on low-carbon development and reducing greenhouse gas emissions (in Spanish) is available at: https://colaboracion.dnp.gov.co/CDT/Conpes/Econ%C3%B3micos/4088.pdf.
← 7. The policy document aims to reduce disaster risk conditions and adapt to climate variability phenomena and is available (in Spanish) at: https://colaboracion.dnp.gov.co/CDT/Conpes/Econ%c3%b3micos/4058.pdf.