Social and Solidarity Economy and South-South and Triangular Cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean: Contributions to Inclusive Sustainable Development

The objective of the article is the following: to show the potentials of South–South and triangular cooperation and the social and solidarity economy as effective mechanisms that contribute to the generation of work, employment and income in the territories, taking into consideration the fact that based on the incorporation of the already-mentioned constituent elements of the social and solidarity economy, there are real possibilities for influencing local economic and social development. This is understood as “a participatory development process that encourages partnership arrangements between the main private and public stakeholders of a defined territory, enablingthe joint design and implementation of a common development strategy.” (Amorim and Lagarde, 2013, p. 20)

To that end, the article is structured as follows: following this introduction, the first part will present a brief history, objectives, constituent elements and practical actions of South–South and triangular cooperation. In this first part one looks to present the main milestones that point to the growing visibility of South–South and triangular cooperation, as well as some practical experiences carried out by the ILO in the field of South–South and triangular cooperation, and their relationship with local economic and social development. Afterward, in the second part of the work, the idea is to show the potentials of the social and solidarity economy in the generation of work, employment and income, as well as its effective connections with local economic and social development. Then it is demonstrated that if on the one hand the social and solidarity economy offers immense potentials, on the other, in some cases many promising experiences are made impracticable due to the weaknesses that are inherent in the modus operandi of the “sector” (Morais, 2013). Based on this finding, it will be argued that it is possible to face and minimize such weaknesses found in the field of social and solidarity economy, with the support of South–South and triangular cooperation, based on the exchange of knowledge, information, know-how and practice, and even the possibility of creating solidarity-based markets acting in a network.