The New Multilateralism: Multilateral Governance and Regional Development after the SDGs
Speaker: Professor D’Maris Coffman (University College London)
As shifting geopolitical and economic realities expose the limits of the Sustainable Development Goals as a unifying framework, multilateral cooperation is fracturing into regional and sectoral alliances. This talk examines how regional development pacts, e.g. across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Indo-Pacific, are replacing universal institutions with more adaptive forms of cooperation. These frameworks mark a shift from doctrinal to functional multilateralism, coordinated through flexible coalitions linking governments with investors, planners, and researchers in universities and consultancies that provide technical advice and policy support.
Regional pacts of this kind are increasingly shaped by hard realities—energy interdependence, food security, and climate adaptation—rather than by the abstract industrial strategies or urban agendas that dominated UN-Habitat and related initiatives in the SDG era. Their success depends on how well they manage shared vulnerabilities: critical-mineral supply chains, grid interconnection, sustainable agriculture, and water governance. The African Union’s regional power pools and the African Continental Free Trade Area illustrate how energy and trade integration can advance both resilience and economic development.
For Ireland and the wider European Union, this shift is visible in cross-regional engagements with China, whose current focus on trade corridors, logistics networks, and market access increasingly intersects with the EU–China Connectivity Platform and Europe’s participation in Indo-Pacific and African infrastructure dialogues. Post-SDG multilateralism may therefore resemble a web of overlapping regional compacts: using energy transitions as vehicles for energy security, alongside resilient transport corridors and climate-adaptation projects. These initiatives will likely be supported by regional finance and new data-governance frameworks, raising in turn questions around cybersecurity and the role of artificial intelligence.
Professor D’Maris Coffman is Vice Dean (Innovation & Enterprise) and Professor of Economics and Finance at The Bartlett, UCL’s Faculty of the Built Environment, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Earth System Science at Tsinghua University. A Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Foreign Member of the Accademia dei Lincei, and inaugural fellow of the Chinese Economic Association (UK), her work bridges infrastructure economics, climate policy, and economic geography. She has advised the World Bank and G20 on the challenges of financing climate-compatible infrastructure and has published widely on climate policy. Her current research explores models for post-SDG multilateralism in an era of shifting global cooperation.
This event is held both in-person and online, with the lecture delivered in English.
A complimentary Chinese meal will be provided after the lecture.
Zoom Meeting ID: 637 6073 2624
