International Cooperation is often associated with global economic, scientific, environmental, political and security issues. Whenever cooperation initiatives fail, discourses arise to determine the reasons for the failure by studying the roles of the main actors of cooperation, namely the public and private sectors. Yet, despite numerous discussions, problems not only remain unresolved, they have worsened too and often it is the common people that carry the burden of no resolution. If it is the public that is greatly disadvantaged, then what is the role of the common people in International Cooperation? What areas of International Cooperation are most people worldwide involved in?
The expansion of communication and transportation is one of the main goals of International Cooperation. It stimulates a global approach to the most important problems and builds bridges of cooperation between nations. This has proven highly effective in environmental issues. Environmental problems spread from one country to another. These issues urge every nation’s active participation. For example, Japan is well known for mutagenicity and Australia for the studies of the effects of UV radiation. The synthesis of these studies can prove to be essential in addressing environmental problems in the future.
Most of International Cooperation activities for the environment are successful due to the incentives it offers for all nations involved. These include cost sharing, the emergence of global scale issues, diffusion of scientific competence, and above all, increased awareness of the common people on the necessity of environmental preservation and protection.
However, International Cooperation does not always thrive as expected. National objectives are not identical, opportunity costs differ from country to country, and even government structures are not parallel. For large cooperation projects, addressing the question ‘who benefits more?’ in dividing gains according to individual contribution hinders cooperation. All these obstacles are apparent in the study of US and UK programs for the conversion and downsizing of nuclear weapons in Russia. One of the major problems was lack of coordination among US and UK cooperation programs. On the domestic side, there was a lack of complete Russian political-technical programs for the resolution of nuclear proliferation in closed cities. It seems that less attention is paid to the impact of International negotiations on domestic politics and how it affects the Russian people. As such, the program ended as an excessive emphasis on immediate marketing on technological products rather than minimizing the nuclear weapon in the country.
International cooperation on Politics and Security is a very complex issue for it entails vast awareness and comprehension from local citizens. This case in Russia shows that some International negotiation has a subtle reciprocal effect on domestic decision making in the state that participates.
Unlike the results on the issue in Russia, much of the success of International cooperation in Tourism has presented how each country showed interests in studying each other’s culture. In order to establish cooperation with another country, it is necessary to know more about their culture and their indigenous capacity to obtain sustainable development. One good example is Egypt, which is known for its tourist attraction, has achieved so many successful agreements with different countries. The 'Pyramids of Giza' is considered as a World Heritage Site and more tourists world wide are coming each year to experience and appreciate the Egyptian culture. Egypt has used this opportunity to develop and enhance the Egyptian economic relations with other countries of the world, as well as invest Egypt's international relations so as to serve development targets and merge them with world economy. Egypt has received billions of grants from US China, Japan, Canada and some countries in Middle East and Europe in exchange of scientific and historical researches in their country.
International cooperation in Tourism, just like environmental issues, received greater response because of how it directly affects and benefits the citizens. Tourism gives out employment and economic opportunity to the common folk. It also opens smaller countries to greater prospects to get along with larger countries.
International Cooperation is a very broad global issue. Focusing on the given examples of achievements and drawbacks of International Cooperation, it is important to give emphasis on the welfare of the majority. Just like in a simple group where in the decision of the majority should rule. Therefore,the role of the common people in the cooperation is to become one of the main actors and be the main beneficiaries of the international programs. The government has a huge responsibility in communicating with the rest of the state to comprehend what International Cooperation is all about. This also gives emphasis on the importance of unity. Unity is not about putting all the nations in to one culture but it is about integrating them together by understanding cross cultural diversity and accepting the differences. In bigger projects, it is best to think about what would be the direct impact on the people first, before focusing on the personal gains. It is like giving more efforts on what can be contributed in order to achieve best results. Benefits will always come in the end. International Cooperation entails agreement between countries and this can be achieved with proper communication and understanding on the involved nations’ side.
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