Our Mission:

To respond to the complex challenges connected with desperate migration and rapid urbanization through “sustainable development zones” (SDZs), which are new urban communities with special legal and administrative institutions that further sustainable development in line with the UN Agenda 2030.

Our Role:

As a non-profit/NGO, our team develops the physical and institutional structure of SDZs, including their legal, policy, administrative, financial, masterplanning, and operational needs. We do this by leveraging our own expertise and by bringing together key stakeholders from government, private sector, civil society, and the international community.

Our Services:

We are a one-stop shop for organizations seeking to develop zone-based solutions to migration and urbanization. We offer tailor-made advice, concept formation, feasibility studies, referrals, and more to governments, local communities, NGOs, international organizations, and the private sector.

Our Philosophy:

We, the Alliance, come from different backgrounds, but are united in a common view: we must re-think human mobility and migration and embed it in a positive context, in line with the Global Compact for Migration. Migration today encompasses several hundred million people who have left their homes to look for better livelihoods in big cities, including desperate migrants who have left their homes for reasons of extreme poverty, violent conflicts, and climate change. 

In most cases, return is not realistic, so local integration becomes the preferred option. However, local integration has proven to be very difficult as people have become trapped in the “informal sector“ in the big cities or in camps, ideally run by humanitarian agencies. Re-thinking migration for all these people means accepting a new threefold paradigm:

1. They should be perceived as citizens, consumers, and producers rather than as objects of care.

2. They need to be connected with nearby cities for mutual benefit, while, inversely, isolated camps should become cities.

3. They must have special legal and administrative institutions that allow for a qualitative leap in residents’ access to the formal sector (IDs, housing, work and business permits, etc).

Leading the “SEZs Plus” Movement

Special economic zones (SEZs) have traditionally been seen as tools for attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) and promoting exports. They did this primarily through a combination of customs exemptions, tax incentives, infrastructure, efficient regulation, and streamlined public service delivery. 

Today, countries are looking for zones to fulfill a broader mandate encompassing social and environmental dimensions. Zones are therefore increasingly focusing on things like combating climate change (as seen with “green cities”), support for living conditions and local small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) (as seen with South Korea’s EPZ “equal footing policies”), and providing durable solutions for migrants (as seen e.g. with the Jordan Compact). In some cases, new zones can even support political peace and reconciliation processes.

The SDZ Alliance is at the vanguard of this “SEZ Plus” movement. SDZs directly take up the challenges of the two global compacts for migration and on refugees. Both compacts stress the need to go beyond current humanitarian and development efforts and bring in the private sector. By tackling these challenges, SDZs further the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals for inclusive and sustainable cities (goal 11) as well as decent work and economic growth (goal 8). 

USING SDZs AS Spaces for Institutional Innovation

To get there, strong institutions, built on special jurisdictions, are key. In this regard, “SEZs plus” and SDZs have strong roots in institutional economics and can be perceived as a form of decentralized innovation, much like parallel decentralized innovations in the fields of e.g. renewable energy, communication, or even currency. In fact, special jurisdictions, if adhering to the principles of good governance and sustainable development, are in themselves a form of replicable “new technology” for mastering rapid urbanization and situations of protracted mass displacement.

Why is this so? We found that one of the key obstacles for inclusive and sustainable solutions is that people get trapped in the informal sector, including when it comes to proper ID, housing, jobs, businesses and finances (“bankability”). The legal framework of the SDZ is designed to lower the threshold to help residents transit from the informal to the formal sector of society and economy.

Some argue that through special jurisdictions in the form of SDZs, “parallel structures” would be created and that existing structures, like cities, with vulnerable and other groups of residents within their boundaries or in the vicinity, would actually be a better framework for mastering the challenges of good governance, sustainable development, and helping people to transit from the informal to the formal sector.

While this might be true in some cases, in general it is not, because incremental reforms in local governance take a lot of time and cannot produce the same results as special jurisdictions, especially not in the short to medium term. It can be expected, with clear parallels to other innovations initially deemed disruptive for “existing structures” in the energy, communication, and other sectors, that decentralized institutional innovation will be compatible with existing structures and that there will be clear benefits for all stakeholders.

Building on LOCAL OWNERSHIP AND EMPOWERMENT

SDZs are different from other ideas you may have heard of like “charter cities” or “private governance.” They aren’t a top-down imposition of a foreign system into the countries hosting them. Instead, they are built from the ground up – of, by, and for the people and culture creating them.

That means local ownership of the land, natural resources, and administration; it means good governance that respects both customary practices and the need for justice; and a focus on SMEs as much as on foreign investment so that people can choose from a wide range of empowering opportunities.

SDZs aren’t exactly spaces for launching the institutions desired by foreign donors, corporations, or consultants (as well-intentioned as these may be), but protected spaces for growing the institutions required to release the grip of structures that choke the potential of people and places.

Like other thriving urban centers, SDZs can incubate ideas that not only change the lives of the people within and around them, but that ultimately serve as a “beachhead” for the sustainable transformation of countries and regions. In the same vein, SDZs can be seen as scalable and replicable tools for the challenges of rapid urbanization.