The Role of Standards-Related Capacity Building on the Sustainable Development of Developing Countries: Focusing on the Korea’s Standards-Related AfT Case in Bolivia

Abstract

Many countries provide standards-related aid for trade (AfT) to developing countries in association with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as sharing their experiences and providing training or infrastructure. Regarding the influence of standards-related AfT on the sustainable development of developing countries, we studied Korea’s standards-related AfT program to examine the role and features of standards-related AfT in terms of standards-related capacity building. In this study, we conducted a single case study with a focus on Korea’s standards-related AfT in Bolivia using qualitative descriptive analysis. The result indicated that Korea’s standards-related AfT is associated with three pillars of sustainable development in terms of standards-related capacity, namely standardization, conformity assessment, and metrology, and can be summarized with two key tasks: building testing infrastructure and improving Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) capacity. However, several limitations were found in Korea’s standards-related capacity building activities, such as limited scope, limited target of the program, and the lack of activities for building institutional foundations for standards-related capacity.