Central America 2020

 
The Inter-American Dialogue, the Latin American and Caribbean Center of Florida International University (FIU), and the Institute of Iberoamerican Studies (IEI) in Hamburg, Germany, are pleased to promote Central America 2020, a collaborative study of the development trends and prospects of the next two decades for Central America.

The project, supported by matching grants from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the European Commission (EC), was carried out during 1999-2000. Eduardo Gamarra (FIU) and Klaus Bodemer (IEI) serve as project co-directors, assisted by a steering committee with Central American, US, and European representation.

Central America 2020 had an ambitious set of objectives:

In pursuit of these objectives, Central America 2020 sponsored a series of regional studies on critical development issues. The ten selected topics were: trade and investment, regional integration, environment, migration and transnationalism, public security and the rule of law, economic sectoral trends, employment and poverty, education and social welfare, democratic citizenship, and modernization of the state. Leading academic experts from Central America, the United States, and Europe conducted these studies, each of which included field research, a thematic workshop in Central America, and a final report. Their work was supervised by lead consultants Victor Bulmer-Thomas (University of London) and A. Douglas Kincaid (FIU).

Results of the studies were presented at a large international conference held in San Salvador on November 6, 2000. Smaller seminars are being planned in Washington and Madrid for Spring 2001. The project's web site provides timely information about the various activities organized, as well as the consultants' reports and suggestions for further research. Along with the final report, a series of working papers, research monographs, and books also serve to disseminate findings in both Spanish and English.

Click here for more information about the project from the lead consultants.