The purpose of this contribution is to highlight the importance of partnership and cooperation for Territorial Development (TD), to draw attention the difficulties encountered in scaling up the TD approach, and to discuss TD application in NEN countries, reports Abdelaziz Merzouk.

‘Partnerships and Cooperation are key features in the TD approach’ - The learning visits provided participants with a direct experience and appreciation of TD through the EU LEADER+ programme in the Tuscany region. The field visits and presentations showed that the programme uses a specific intervention approach to promote the development of rural territories, drawing on their own internal dynamics, the learning capacity of local actors, and the potential initiatives of the rural enterprises proposed by them.

With this presentation of the TD approach, we can identify the resemblance and overlap with other concepts we are familiar with in NEN regions such as: ‘local development’ recently developed by UNDP in Bosnia and Herzegovina, ‘Regional development’ and  ‘Gestion / Aménagement du Territoire’, frequently used in the Southern Mediterranean countries. To an extent, all these concepts are used to define a set of social, cultural and economic processes that promote the economic dynamism and improvement of the quality of life of the population in a given territory (rural county/commune, urban centre, region, province, municipality, etc.).  Poverty alleviation and inclusion are dealt with in the area of the improvement of the quality of life. Considering the above merit of the TD concept, the intellectual challenge for the retreat participants was to identify the potential ways of transposing and adapting the EU TD approach to NEN regions.

TD uses a holistic bottom-up approach to rural development involving local partners in steering the future development of their area. Among its features, the local Public-private partnerships (PPP) and Networking are the most determinant of the successful implementation of TD.   In his presentation of TD in Albania, Dr Shkelzen Marku illustrated the importance of partnership building and cooperation as key success factors in TD, and concluded that these were the most difficult task to accomplish the implementation of the TD approach.

IFAD experience in Bosnia and Herzegovina utilizes similar approaches  towards the development and empowerment of the Local Producers Associations (LPA) which act as Local Action Groups in the  partnership bond between civil society organizations, local public institutions (Municipality, Ministries, regional representatives, etc.) and private SMEs. Strong partnerships help in optimizing local development efforts, knowledge and synergies.

Drawing from the examples seen in Tuscany, and from IFAD experience in other countries such as Bosnia and Herzegovina’s successful PPP partnership; these approaches contribute to strengthening the local governance and development resulting to increased investments of  local social services and transparency. In academic terms, partnership building in TD is a win-win engagement based on sharing resources, abilities, skills and experience between subjects of partnership, with the interest of achieving a common purpose or common defined purposes. The visits allowed the participants to see the approach in action and to see the potential of the adaptation and development in IFAD-NEN supported countries, south of the Mediterranean.

Regional networking will help facilitate this experience and knowledge  exchange. The reader is invited to further consult  Planete Terroires - an international TD association for Euro-Mediterranean “twinning” on TD  and experience and knowledge sharing which extends its network to Morocco and Lebanon.