In the framework of the Sino-German Center for Sustainable Development (CSD) GIZ and the China Agricultural University (CAU) are expanding cooperation. Areas of mutual interest comprise policy topics and increasingly academic teaching in the area of international development cooperation.
In this context, CSD held a Sino-German Development Cooperation Workshop with a group of professors and students from the College of International Development and Global Agriculture (CIDGA) at CAU on 29th October 2020. This workshop was aimed at furthering mutual understanding and sharing experience of Sino-German development cooperation as well as triangular cooperation undertaken by CSD.
The Workshop kicked off with welcome remarks delivered by Mr. Thorsten Giehler, the Country Director of GIZ China. He introduced GIZ as part of the German development cooperation system, gave a brief overview of GIZ’s past and present work in China for different commissioning parties and in varying project settings. Then, Prof. Wang Yanlei introduced CIDGA and its delegation. Basing on the reciprocal introduction, Mr. Giehler provided an outlook of evolving trends and future scenarios in Sino-German Development Cooperation, particularly outlining new challenges and opportunities, which aroused students’ strong curiosity and discussion about the modality of Sino-German cooperation and GIZ’s approaches related to cooperation with developing countries.
Mr. Hagen Ettner introduced the CSD to the audience and delivered a presentation on triangular cooperation – the relevance for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, other objectives pursued with the help of this modality, Germany’s global experience with triangular cooperation and the work of the CSD in this area. He also sketched out how increased academic cooperation in the CSD framework could look like and how it could contribute to both, the Sino-German dialogue on development cooperation and policy advice on one hand and facilitation of joint projects and initiatives on the other.
Subsequently, Mr. Florian Miss, director of the project “Support of Regional Economic Cooperation in Asia”, illustrated the rationale, results logic and stakeholder engagement of a regional approach. He showed how the conditions for regional and global trade of especially agricultural products are improved in Cambodia, Lao PDR, Vietnam and Mongolia. Using the example of technical vocational education and training Mr. Miss showed how triangular pilot measures in the context of regional cooperation can be upscaled to triangular cooperation projects under the CSD.
The presentations were followed by a discussion about CSD’s sustainable management approaches in concrete projects and experiences in Sino-German triangular cooperation. The workshop participants reached consensus on the necessity for triangular cooperation to strengthen international development solidarity and its usefulness to get to know each other better. CSD’s successful practices in facilitating dialogue and experience exchange on sustainable development and initiating and fostering triangular cooperation left an impression on the students from CIDGA. It was reconfirmed that exchange and learning opportunities like these can make students interested in and contributing to topics of (Sino-German) development cooperation. CIDGA and CSD agreed to expand cooperation in areas of mutual interest such as joint research to support policy advice and dialogue as well as academic teaching and debate.
