South-South Cooperation in Suriname : New Prospects for Infrastructure Integration?

The current wave of South-South Cooperation (SSC), through its heavy emphasis on infrastructure as a necessary-yet-insufficient condition for development, creates new opportunities and new challenges for regional integration in Latin America and the Caribbean. This article examines the growing role of SSC in infrastructure and integration in Suriname, with a focus on transportation infrastructure. More specifically, it analyzes how the forging of new bilateral and multilateral partnerships is changing the country’s prospects for integration, not only into the region, but also into global markets. I focus on three South-South partnerships particularly relevant to Suriname’s infrastructure integration: its deepening bilateral relations with China, its growing closeness to Brazil, and its membership in the IIRSA process. On the one hand, there is an increasingly clear mismatch between China’s mega-project approach to Suriname, which includes a new port and North-South road into the deeply forested interior, and Brazilian plans for infrastructure development in the Amazon region. Moreover, the IIRSA framework prioritizes different projects altogether. These gaps suggest the need for Surinamese government to play a more proactive role in coordinating the different SSC initiatives for infrastructure and integration being proposed in (and around) Suriname.