CEPAL Review - Current Issue

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary on 25 February 2023. This date is symbolic not only for the institution but also for the region in view of the undeniable influence ECLAC has had in the regional conversation on regional and global development patterns, the challenges of economic and social development and, more recently, sustainable development, over the past three quarters of a century.

The Latin America and Caribbean region is mired in three development traps: a long-term inability to grow, high inequality, and low institutional and governance capacity. This article offers an analysis of development challenges that centres on a 10-point catalogue of gaps constituting priority areas of action for public policy and collective transformation efforts. To this is added an eleventh area concerned with how to move from the present situation to the desired scenarios, something that requires a focus on challenges related to governance, institutional capacities and opportunities for social dialogue, not only to envision the future but also as tools for the management of change and transformation. All this adds up to an agenda of 11 great transformations, presented as a vision of the priority issues the countries of the region should address to move towards a more productive, inclusive and sustainable future.

This article presents an analysis of globalization since the 2008 global crisis. Amid sluggish growth and weakened global trade in goods relative to the hyperglobalization boom of the 1990s and 2000s, the international economy is undergoing a process not of deglobalization so much as polyglobalization, characterized by the rising decentralization of global economic governance, multipolarity, geoeconomics and the return of industrial policy. Recalling the legacy of Raúl Prebisch with respect to the critical role that industrial policy played in development success stories, exemplified by the Republic of Korea, I argue that successful industrial policy must both boost exports and strike a harmonious balance between autonomy and public-private integration in State-market relationships.

Latin America and the Caribbean have a structural low-growth problem, which is explained largely by the fact that productivity has not increased, and has even declined, in recent decades. Although productivity growth will require continuous development of a medium- and long-term agenda aimed at improving “fundamentals”, this article proposes a new complementary strategy for growth, transformation of the production structure and employment for the region, based on a deepening of its productive development policies and improving their implementation. To this end, six guidelines are proposed that include governance, among other elements; and special emphasis is placed on the “how”, in other words how to successfully implement policies of this type.

Climate crises will adversely impact the already weak and volatile growth of Latin American and Caribbean countries and significant public and private investment in adaptation and mitigation will be needed to address the effects of climate change. This is no easy proposition in a region that underinvests and has a complex macroeconomic scenario. Macroeconomic and financing policies have great potential to boost investment, but fiscal policy must safeguard public investment during fiscal consolidation processes and find ways to enhance it during recovery phases in order to crowd in private investment. Monetary policy, in coordination with macroprudential regulation, must not only help to manage domestic demand over the economic cycle, but also embed climate-related risk in financing.

Latin America and the Caribbean set out to achieve regional integration. However, sixty years on from the launch of the first major regional project —the Latin American Free Trade Association (LAFTA)— the modest results have fallen well short of the original aspirations. Latin America and the Caribbean is a fragmented region. Institutions for integration have achieved little, and integration has largely appeared in discourse, rather than among national policy priorities. Politicization of integration has hampered progress on the pragmatic and long-term vision offered by this regional project. As supply chains are nearshored, integration is once again becoming an important issue. In view of the national circumstances that must be taken into account to move forward with this major regional project, a number of measures are proposed in this article, to take advantage of nearshoring and pave the way for greater integration, to drive growth, development and well-being.

Environmental sustainability is a key determinant of the viability of development. Latin America and the Caribbean is imitating a global pattern of unsustainable consumption and production, whose consequences, including environmental degradation, biodiversity and ecosystem loss, and climate disruption, affect the population’s standard of living and limit its potential for growth. This paper presents stylized facts concerning the region’s development model and the way in which sustainability has been addressed in ECLAC thinking, also briefly examining other economic schools of thought. It concludes with policy recommendations aimed at reconciling economic growth and environmental sustainability, taking into consideration the region’s wealth of ecological and natural resources, its position in the global economy, and the need for a commitment to productivity that can foster a big push for sustainability and just transitions in relation to the challenge of climate change.

Seventy-five years after the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) was founded, reducing the concentration of income and wealth remains one of the key challenges in Latin America. This article firstly reviews the contributions made by ECLAC and Latin American structuralism to the analysis and measurement of the income distribution. It then describes the main trends of inequality in the region from 1990 to the present, and suggests items to be included on the agenda of inequality reduction in the coming years.

This article reviews the conceptual contributions of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) to the understanding of gender inequalities in Latin America and the Caribbean over recent decades. Having examined the information available, it analyses the persistence of the sexual division of labour as a structural challenge of gender inequality and then presents the ECLAC proposal for a move towards a new model of development and social organization, namely the care society, and its implications for public policy design in the region.

Social protection was extensively discussed at the 1995 World Summit for Social Development. Over 75 years, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has developed an agenda that prioritizes the construction of a rights-based society in order to move towards sustainable development. ECLAC argues that social protection is essential to eradicate poverty, reduce inequalities and successfully pursue a strategy of inclusive social development, and advocates universal, comprehensive, sustainable and resilient social protection systems. These form the basis of welfare States, which will have to cope with new risks and trends such as the digital transformation, the demographic and epidemiological transition, the climate crisis and the rapid changes shaping the future of the labour market. New social and fiscal covenants are needed to ensure the financial sustainability of social protection and to progress towards inclusive social development.

Education is fundamental to the achievement of inclusive and sustainable economic and social development and more just and cohesive societies. Despite having made considerable strides in terms of education access, progression and completion, the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean face a dual challenge: accelerating progress and reducing gaps in education coverage and completion rates while improving the quality and relevance of education. Gains in access to education and to technical and vocational training have failed to translate into the skills that students need to adapt to lifelong learning and retraining processes and find their place in a changing world pervaded by technology. Prolonged school closures during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic exacerbated these challenges. For education to recover, a profound transformation is required, one that ensures financial sustainability and strengthens the region’s institutional frameworks.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, where every country is a country of origin, destination, return or transit, international migration is becoming ever more complex and intensive. Migratory flows are increasingly characterized by irregularity; and migrants represent one of the most vulnerable population groups, as victims of stigmatization, discrimination, xenophobia and racism. However, migrants contribute to sustainable development through work, entrepreneurship, remittances and tax payments, in addition to their culture. To enhance these contributions, public policies and migration governance are needed at the multilateral, national and local levels, based on the interaction between migration and development and fulfilment of the countries’ human rights obligations.