How do international factors empower or hinder some states of the Global South in making progress toward the UN Sustainable Development Goals compared to other states?

International factors seem to be very important in the hinderance of the Global South, as the lack of cooperation between nations and international institutions create a stalling of necessary progress. My first point comes from listening to the podcast from the Egypt group. It seems like all of the international action focus was on the Nile and how it is extremely vital to life and daily functioning in Egypt. With the creation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance on the Nile from Ethiopia, Egypt’s society is now struggling since lots of important factors to their wellbeing such as clean drinking water or a decreased water flow which is harming their irrigation systems. The overreliance from Egypt (this isn’t a criticism on Egypt, just an observation) on the Nile and the lack of consideration from Ethiopia on a neighboring nation’s shared resource creates a hindering relationship when it comes to trying to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Ethiopia is most likely aware of Egypt’s need to utilize the Nile, yet built a structure that reduces the Nile’s quality and effectiveness. Now this problem isn’t completely unsolvable, and negotiation could definitely help Egypt regain some quality of life, but the fact that this conflict is turning into a proxy war between the US and China is only adding to the difficulties of trying to resolve the problem and make some progress. The group did offer a good solution to this problem, with saying that Sudan could help negotiate with Ethiopia about the industrial developments on the Nile, but the likelihood that happens with the US and China making matters worse (or more volatile) seems slim.

Bangladesh is a different story, as the international organizations are trying to help them, but their countries absurd amount of governmental corruption is barring them from being able to obtain any support. Bangladesh’s government is extremely corrupt and diverts many necessary economic resources for their own personal gain. The World Bank tried to implement a way to give Bangladesh more aid in order to get their population back on the right side of the international poverty line, but the corruption of the nation gives the World Bank a lot of hesitation because they’re scared that the aid money won’t go to necessities such as health care. The conditional aid is a problem because it will take a long time for a nation like Bangladesh to actually weed out the corruption and by the time they do and the World Bank actually deems them able to accept the conditional aid, it might be too late. On the other hand, I understand that the World Bank is hesitant to give the aid and applies conditions to it because as we have learned by working on these podcasts, there are a ton of nations that need help from international institutions in order to improve the quality of living for their population. It creates a no-win situation where Bangladesh’s government has no incentive to stop their corruption as they are aware that they won’t meet the conditions set by the World Bank, and the World Bank has no incentive to work out better conditions for Bangladesh because they see no improvement in the governmental corruption. Overall, the podcasts showed lots of ways that international factors can really hinder or trap nations easily and make it excruciatingly difficult for the international community to empower the states of the Global South.