PARTICIPATORY
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
O'Riordan, T. (1988) "The Politics of
Sustainability," in Kerry Turner's Sustainable Environment Protection:
Principles and Practice, pp. 29-49, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
- Its
[sustainability's] beguiling simplicity and apparently self-evident
meaning have obscured its inherent ambiguity. Its survival attests to the fact that developmental
interests now recognize that much more serious attention must be paid to
incorporating a thorough understanding of environmental processes into
project investment calculus, if for no other reason that failure to do so
may result in environmental side-effects that carry economic losses. 29
- It
may be only a matter of time before the metaphor of sustainability become
so absurd as to be meaningless, certainly as a device to straddle the
ideological conflicts that pervade contemporary environmentalism. Once the notions that underlie
sustainability are politicized, the concept is effectively devalued. 29
- The
notion of sustainability applies most conveniently to the replenishable
use of renewable resources.
29
- As a
specific notion, sustainability probably appeared first in the Greek
vision of 'Ge' or 'Gaia' as the Goodness of the Earth, the mother figure
of natural replenishment. The
historian, Donald Hughes (1983, Gaia: An Ancient View of our Planet, The
Ecologist, Vol. 13, No. 2,3, p. 55) summarizes the Gaian perspective:
"[Gaian] nourishes and cares for all creatures as her own
children. From her all things
spring; to her return all things that die. Her creative womb bore all that is, including the first
of all things that die. Her
creative womb bore all that is, including the first of all the sky and all
that it contains…" So important was the practice of sustainability to
the Greeks that provincial governors were rewarded or punished according
to the look of the land. 31
- Samuel
Hays (1959, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency, Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, p. 266)…was probably the first to reveal how
the principles of sustainability, if vaguely defined and drawn from
insecure scientific principles, could be exploited for political ends:
"The conservation movement did not involve a reaction against large
scale corporate business, but, in fact, shared its views in a mutual
revulsion against unrestrained competition and undirected economic
development. Both [developers
and conservationists] placed a premium on large scale capital
organization, technology and industry - wide cooperation and planning to
abolish the uncertainties and waste of competitive resource
use." 33
- "[Sustainable
utilization means] ensuring utilization [does] not exceed the productive
capacity of exploited species, reducing sustainable yields to sustainable
levels, reducing incidental take, maintaining the habits of exploited
species, carefully allocating timber concessions and limiting firewood
consumption, and regulating the stocking of grazing lands"
(International Union for the Conservation of Nature (1980) World
Conservation Strategy, Geneva: IUCN, p. 1982).
- What
we see is a triple-level approach to sustainability. Basic needs provides the
fundamental objective, eco-development emphasis the
location/culture-specific application of the concept, and sustainable
utilization becomes the 'common sense' mechanism for application. The Strategy did not
initially visualize its task in these terms, but, in response to
criticism, has subsequently moved this way. This triangular approach is akin to that recently
developed by Chambers (1986).
Chambers distinguishes between three approaches to development,
namely environment-oriented (similar to the early IUCN view of
sustainable utilization), development oriented (approximating to
traditional development viewpoints as expressed by man Third World leaders
at the UN Environment Conference), and livelihood-oriented (close
to the basic needs approach).
He suggests a fusion of the three into sustainable livelihood
development which is close to the recent thinking on eco-development. "It sees sustainable
development as achievable by securing more and more sustainable
livelihoods for the critical group of the poor, thus establishing use of
the environment, enhancing productivity and establishing a dynamic
equilibrium, above the sustainable livelihood line, of population and
resources. It seeks to create
and maintain conditions in which poor people are less poor and see work
for themselves in sustainable development" (Chambers, R. (1986)
"Sustainable Livelihoods: An Opportunity for the World Commission on
Environment and Development," Institute of Development Studies,
University of Sussex, Brighton, England, p. 13). Chambers thus approaches the core area of
sustainability, which is an enabling condition, freeing people to uplift
their impoverished condition through means appropriate to their cultures and
aspirations. 37-8
- What
follows is a generic analysis of the difficulties of putting
sustainability into desertification and tropical forest depletion. (i) Most of the non-sustainable
action is taken by the accumulation of small decisions made at household
level by people who are trapped into undermining their own
livelihood. (ii) Such actions
are essentially uncontrolled unless the structural conditions that induce
poverty and desperation are altered.
(iii) Middlemen who take advantage of the desperation of the
poverty-stricken and the landless exploit any propensity to accumulate
surplus by expropriating capital through extortion and debt-creation. (iv) Militarism, and especially
civil war, which is now commonplace in poor Third-World countries, strikes
against any successful approach to sustainable development by drawing away
capital into arms, removing able-bodied labor into warfare, and physically
destroying the vital infrastructure of rural development. It is unlikely that any long-term
agricultural program built on sustainability principles can remain
unscathed. (v) International
aid is not geared to sustainable development to the micro-scale. Aid is linked to established
political structures and to a degree is dependent on recipient government
support. Recent studies of
World Bank aid, even those programs which allegedly have a specific
environmental component, indicate outcomes which are socially divisive and
environmentally destructive.
42
- The
best practical means approach, if operated to its full extent, could verge
on the application of sustainable utilization. 45
- One
can only be cautious about an effective future role for the concept of
sustainability. It is
probably going to languish as a 'good idea' which cannot sensibly be put
into practice - like 'democracy' and 'accountability.' Its advantage is that it
establishes a useful moral position which can be exploited by
reformists. Its disadvantage
is that it can be manipulated into tinkering adjustments to the status quo
by established interests which, in order to retain respectability, have to
make certain relatively minor concessions. The real threat is that the concept becomes widely
misunderstood, it is confined to the flow rates of depletion and
replenishment, it remains regarded essentially as a scientific and
managerial device, and it has no role either in institutional reform,
mobilization of new power relationships, or in the extension of a more
pragmatic eco-morality. 49
Rondinelli, D. (1987) Development Administration and
U.S. Foreign Aid Policy, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
- Conservative
Senator John L. MecClellan of Arkansas charged that for too long the
United States "has attempted to export democracy abroad to unwilling
and unready recipients, while neglecting the obvious needs of our people
and democratic institutions at home." He concluded that "foreign aid as an instrument of
international diplomacy has been a flop and we should stop it." 70
- "This
expansion of poverty at the same time the countries are getting richer in
GNP has created a nagging sense among the people of the United States that
our humanitarian impulse has been misdirected. Not only has foreign aid appeared to be a way of
involving and then entangling our country in situations that deteriorate
into violence, but foreign aid dollars have also often seemed to increase
the gap between rich and poor" (Owens and Shaw, 1973: 2). 71
- The
Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 set new guidelines for economic development
assistance. Congress insisted
that: (1) Bilateral development aid should concentrate increasingly on
sharing American technical expertise, farm commodities, and industrial
goods to meet critical development problems, and less on large-scale
capital transfers, which when made should be associated with contributions
from other industrial countries working together in a multilateral
framework. (2) United States
assistance should concentrate on the development of labor-intensive
technologies suitable to the less developed countries. (3) Further United States bilateral
support for development should focus on critical problems in those
functional sectors which affect the lives of the majority of people in the
developing countries: food production, rural development and nutrition;
population planning and health; education, public administration, and
human resource development.
(4) United States cooperation in development should be carried out
to the maximum extent possible through the private sector; including those
public service institutions which already have ties in the developing
countries, such as educational institutions, cooperatives, credit unions,
and voluntary agencies. (5) Development planning must be the
responsibility of each sovereign country. United States assistance should be administered in a
collaborative style to support the development goals chosen by each
country receiving assistance.
(6) United States bilateral development assistance should give the
highest priority to undertakings submitted by the host governments which
directly improve the lives of the poorest of their people and their
capacity to participate in the development of their countries. 73
- The
"new directions" legislation also explicitly recognized that
"the degree to which human talent, capital, and technology are
successfully combined to achieve development goals and improve people's
lives depends on management skills," and that these skills were weak
in nearly all in developing countries (U.S. Congress, 1973:13). Thus the Foreign Assistance Act of
1973 reaffirmed that help "will be provided through the foreign aid
program in the general field of public administration." 74
- From
the early years of the U.S. foreign aid program, and perhaps manifested
most clearly in the community development movement, many aid professionals
believed that local organizations and local governments played a crucial
role in economic and social development. Although community development as an administrative
approach had been largely abandoned by AID in the 1960s, the interest in
working through local groups was still strong among many development
professionals. 74-75
- Among
the functions that local governments performed were planning for and
administering some national services and facilities at the local level;
providing small-scale infrastructure and services in rural areas;
budgeting and allocating local and national revenues for municipal
operating expenses and small capital investments; and collecting local
taxes, levies, and other revenues.
In some countries, local governments played an active role in
arbitrating local conflicts, processing claims, channeling the requests
and demands of local groups to higher levels of government, and managing
small local and provincial projects.
Local governments in some countries also provided a communications
link between national and provincial governments and private organizations
and assisted local communities with self-help projects. Local organizations such as
cooperatives, mutual benefit and social organizations, and political
parties, it was found, also played important roles in rural development by
assisting with the delivery of productive and social services, mobilizing
local resources, organizing cooperative and self-help activities, and
acting as intermediaries between government officials and local
residents. 75
- Uphoff
and Esman (1974: xi) argued that the cases showed "a strong,
empirical basis for concluding that local organization is a necessary of
not sufficient condition for accelerated rural development which emphasizes
improvement in the productivity and welfare of the majority of rural
people." 75
- If
rural institutions were to play a strong role in development, they had to
be linked to a larger organizational network. They found that in both mixed economies and socialist
societies in Asia, rural programs were the responsibility of a mixture of
local, provincial, and national governments and of political and private
organizations. 76
- "What
count are systems or networks of organization, both vertically and horizontally,
that make local development more than an enclave phenomenon." It was these networks of local
organizations that AID would have to help strengthen. 76
- From
the late 1960s on, there had been a growing consensus in AID that popular
participation in development activities was a necessary condition for
success. Indeed, in the late
1960s, Congress had added Title IX to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961
that required AID to place emphasis "on assuring maximum
participation in the task of economic development on the part of people in
developing countries, through the encouragement of democratic local
government institutions."
83
- The
"new directions" mandate in the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973
focused even more strongly on the need for participation by the poor in
development projects and programs.
Yet there was little consensus with AID on what participation meant
- different groups within the agency defined in differently - or on the
most effective means of eliciting it. Thus, in 1977, AID commissioned a study from Cornell
University of ways for analyzing the potential for participation in
project design and implementation.
It also entered into a cooperative agreement with Cornell to
provide technical assistance to "participatory projects" in
developing countries. 83
- Uphoff,
Cohen, and Goldsmith (1979:4) argued that "asking 'What is
Participation?' may be the wrong question, since it implies that
participation is a single phenomenon. It appears more fruitful and proper to regard
participation as a descriptive term denoting the involvement of a
significant number of persons in situations or actions which enhance their
well-being, e.g., their income, security or self-esteem…We find it
more instructive, however, to think in terms of three dimensions of participation:
(1) what kind of participation is under consideration? (2) who
is participating in it? and (3) how is participation
occurring?" 83
- Four
types of participation were identified: participation in decision-making,
in implementation, in benefits, and in evaluation. Also, four sets of potential
participants in rural development projects and programs were identified -
local residents, local leaders, government personnel, and foreign
personnel - each often having different perceptions, interests, and
definitions of a project's benefits.
Means of identifying how participation was occurring were also
described - the types of initiatives that were used to elicit
participation (mobilized from the center or autonomous); the types of
inducements for participation (voluntary or coercive); the structure and
channels of participation (individual or collective, formal or informal,
direct or representative; the duration (intermittent or continuous) and
scope (narrow or broad range of activities); and the results of
participation (whether or not it leads to "empowerment" - that
is, increases the capacity of people to satisfy their objectives and needs
through involvement). 84
- National
integrated development agencies that were responsible for a wide variety
of functions rather than just for particular sectoral activities such as
transportation, public works, or agriculture had the advantage of being
free from some of the rigid audit and control procedures imposed on
regular line agencies. They
could provide local interest groups with access to national agencies, and
they could provide a more comprehensive perspective on how the project
could be implemented. 86
- The
studies notes that the impact of IRD projects was often limited because
the intended beneficiaries had not participated in their design and
implementation. Planners
often ignored or underestimated the target group's perception of risk in
participating in rural development projects that were uncertain or untried. Unsuccessful projects were also
found to be administratively and technically complex. Often, the results that the
projects were designed to achieve were those more important to the
international assistance agencies than to local groups. A number of organizational and
managerial attributes were found to be essential to assuring better
results for intended beneficiaries.
These included openness to participation by a broad range of
community groups, ability to adapt activities to culturally accepted practices,
capacity to perform multiple functions, the ability to establish and
maintain strong linkages with other organizations on which resources and
political support depended, and the willingness and ability to distribute
benefits equitably. Local participation
could be enhanced, these studies indicate, if organizations responsible
for integrated development projects adapted new ideas to local
circumstances and conditions, devised ways of gaining acceptance for new
ideas among the intended beneficiaries, obtained a commitment of resources
from the beneficiaries, limited or reduces exploitation of the groups they
were working with, and designed projects in such a way that they can be
handed over to the beneficiary groups for implementation when foreign
assistance ended. 88
- A
number of USAID missions had also attempted to identify the causes of
poverty. Among the major ones
identified were national economic policies that were adverse to widespread
economic growth or to the equitable distribution of benefits, inadequate
agricultural resources or lack of access for the poor to productive
assets, and poor national resources bases in some areas of the
country. Moreover, other
missions found instances where social and political practices
discriminated against large groups of people or against particular areas
of the country, where the national government was simply not committed to
equitable distribution of the benefits of development, or where weak
administrative and institutional structures prevented benefits from being
distributed widely. 90-1
- Moris
pointed out that the following factors must be seriously considered in
designing development projects that introduce new methods and technologies
aimed at helping poor farmers.
The projects must (1) offer low risks for participants; (2) provide
visible and substantial benefits at the farm level; (3) offer participants
regular access to cash incomes; (4) assist peasant farmers with meeting
recurrent costs after the innovation is introduce; (5) avoid expanding
welfare services before there is a production base that can yield revenue
to pay for them; (6) use innovations that are not dependent for their
adoption on loan financing on the initial phases; (7) consider long-term
effects of technology transfer because these may be quite different from
the immediate effects; (8) be implemented in a way that does not bypass
local officials, who will remain long after outside experts and
technicians have left; (9) build administrative capacity on small
incremental, rather than large-scale and complex, activities. 97
- Moris
concluded that, realistically, development projects and programs could not
be designed comprehensively and in detail - that s, in the conventional
"blueprint" fashion.
Many of the lessons of past experience could provide guidelines for
those engaged in project planning and management, but the real challenge
to both AID and governments in developing countries was to create a
process of project management based on continuous learning. 97
Wengert, N. (1976) Citizen Participation: Practice In
Search of a Theory, in Albert Utto, Derrick Sewell, and Timothy O'Riordan
(eds.) Natural Resources for a Democratic Society: Public Participation in
Decision-Making, pp. 23-40, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
- "If
there is a political revolution going on throughout the world, it is what
might be called the participation explosion" (Almond, G., and Berba
S. (1971) The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five
Nations 2, as quoted in Participatory Democracy 1, in T. Cook and P.
Morgan, (eds.)). 23
- The
terms ["citizen participation" and "public
participation"] are used in the context of fundamental political
decisions with respect to government structure and the content of public
programs, referring to the importance of "consent of the
governed" as a prerequisite of the social compact. But the terms are also applied to
routine processes of political activity, such as political parties and
elections, administrative program planning, and day-to-day management of public
agencies. Demands for public
participation may be motivated by a desire to alter the power structure
and thus weaken "the establishment," or they may simply seek
better information inputs and more responsive public service. 23
- Little
research on the subject has been undertaken, and even as speculative
philosophy the ideology of participation has not been systematically
organized or neatly structured.
23
- Some
advocates of participation approach the subject as a matter of strategy -
a maneuver to accomplish other unstated or stated objectives. How participation and the
arguments for it are used depends on, among other things, whether one is
working from within or from outside the system. From those outside the system "Power to the
People" signals major changes in the power relationships, if not
revolution. For those within
the system, such as government agencies and interest groups, participation
may serve as a major technique for gaining legislation and political
support and legitimation. 26
- In
some situations participation is urged as a way to reduce tensions and
resolve conflicts. Underlying
this emphasis are assumptions that sharing points of view increases
understanding and tolerance and that the very process of involvement
weakens a tendency toward dogmatic assertions and reduces personal biases
and mistrust. 26
- In
recent years the emphasis on participation and social therapy has been
frequently articulated in connection with the so-called War on
Poverty. On the premise that
particularly the urban poor are alienated from society, opportunities for
them to be involved in decisions with respect to programs which affected
them were provided to cure this "social disease." Variants of
this approach have appeared on college campuses, leading to varieties of
student involvement in academic decisions. Proposals for increased participation have also been
directed to overcoming the adverse effects of racial prejudice and other
forms of discrimination. 27
- For
Jean Jacques Rousseau the answer was simple: democracy can only exist on a
face-to-face basis, such as he found in the Swiss Cantons and as existed
in New England towns.
Representative government to him was not democracy. And this view is implicit in the
position of those arguing for increased community control - of schools, of
police, of planning. But such
advocates, like Rousseau, usually neglect the issues on intercommunity
coordination and of resolving policy conflicts in the larger communities -
cities, counties, states, regions, and the nation. 30
- American
government rests on pragmatic experience, rather than on grand
formulations of political theory.
31
- Pragmatic
responses to particular problems have dominated political action - and the
major characteristic of pragmatic philosophy is that it is no
philosophy. 31
- Concepts
of public participation could benefit from efforts to relate them to
theories of political and social power. These aspects of power theory would seem of particular
relevance: the first is the revolutionary concept of the seizure
of power; the second are the concepts of community power,
as developed in a variety of social research in recent decades; and the third
are elite theories….
33
- "Mass
governance is neither feasible nor desirable. Widespread popular participation in the national
political decisions is not only impossible to achieve in a modern
industrial society, it is incompatible with the liberal values of
individual dignity, personal liberty, and social justice. Efforts to encourage mass
participation in American politics are completely misdirected. To believe that making American
government more accessible to mass influence will make it any more human
is to go directly against the historical and social science evidence. It is the irony of democracy that
masses, not elites, pose the greatest threat to the survival of democratic
values. More than anything
else, America needs an enlightened elite capable of acting decisively to
preserve individual freedom, human dignity, and the values of life,
liberty, and property. Our
efforts must be directed toward ensuing that the established order is
humane, decent, tolerant, and benign. Elitism is a necessary characteristic of all
societies. The elitism we
have ascribed to American society is not a unique corruption of the
democratic ideas attributable to capitalism, war, the
"military-industrial complex," or any other events of people in
this nation. There is no
"solution" to elitism, for it is not the problem in a democracy. There have been many mass
movements, both "left" and "right" in their political
ideology, which have promised to bring power to the people. Indeed, the world has witnessed
many "successful" mass movements which have overthrown social
and political systems, often at a great cost of human life, promising to
empower the masses. But
invariably they have created a new elite systems which are at least as
"evil," and certainly no more democratic, than the older systems
which they replaced.
Revolutions come and go - but the masses remain powerless. The question, then, is not how to
combat elitism or empower the masses or achieve revolution, but rather how
to build an orderly, human, and just society. 35
- Citizen
involvement and public participation must also meet the test of public
interest. This is why this
article has stressed the need for a theory of participation which can be
related both to normative and empirical conceptions of our democratic
system and integrated with American pragmatic experience. 40
Honadle, G., and VanSant, J. (1985) Implementation for Sustainability:
Lessons from Integrated Rural Development, West Hartford, CT: Kumarian
Press.
- Program failure...results,
at least in part, from wills in conflict and the impact of this conflict
on the organization and management of the development process. 5
- Sustainability is the
continuation of benefit flows to rural people with or without the programs
or organizations that stimulated those benefits in the first place.
2
- Development involves
changes, the most important of which is in the attitudes and actions of
those people who become participants--individually or in groups--in the
process itself. Through participation in their own development, people
have the opportunity to strengthen their capabilities and build their own
channels for expression and accountability. 46
- Local action is the key to
sustainability. 46
- Development initiatives will
not be sustained unless beneficiaries make some form of resource commitment
to support those initiatives. 46
- One way to improve the
quality of project designs and the probability that beneficiary response
will be achieved is to increase civil servants' understanding of the
perspectives, priorities and behavior of the villagers. 47
- Successful local
organizations can play positive roles as vehicles for coordinating and
spreading the benefits of outside assistance.
- Political development is a
pre-requisite to sustainability. p.74
- Institutional capacity,
therefore, is a key element in project sustainability. p.74
- Successful organizations in
contrast gain legitimacy with the poorer elements in the community by
addressing their specific needs, building trust, and achieving widespread
user satisfaction.
- A major implication of this
discussion is that a sensitive awareness of local conditions, practices,
and needs, combined with knowledge of the policy environment, is essential
for development planning and management. p.61
- It has also been suggested
that when civil servants and project staff experience a participatory
management setting they will be more willing to involve villages in
project decisions. p.62
- The role of personal
leadership is stressed. The issues importance derives from the crucial
role of agency or project staff as contact agents between local people and
civil servants. p.63
- If a participatory
environment is nor established from the beginning, it is more difficult to
establish it later. p.69
- What is important is the
participants control how these locally generated res. are allocated and
used.
- What begins, if anything, at
project end is ultimately more important than the project itself; what
continues represents the real contribution of the project. p.75
- Knowledge of rural peoples
interpretations of their circumstance is a key element in ensuring the
sustainability of interventions supported by outsiders. p.77
- In this context, every
planning and implementation decision should be made in the light of the
sustainability issue. 77
- Strategies for achieving
sustainability, then, must be well grounded in the context of local
decision making and they must be based on an awareness of local
constraints. p.77
- Macroeconomic policies can
impinge on both implementation and sustainability. p.81
- The reliance on a
technological package requiring the heavy use of chemical fertilizer may
not be sustainable in a country in which fertilizer is imported using
scarce foreign exchange, or where the rural infrastructure is inadequate
to ensure its timely distribution. p.82
- A key aspect of the process
concept is the artificiality of the distribution between design and
implementation. p.93
- The twists and turns of
multiple objectives, informal processes, contradictory roles, and shared
risk are necessary. Thus the lessons from the experience will be equally
intertwined and each one must be seen in relation to the others. p.98
- A better approach is to
determine a local mix of public or private initiative and internal or
process capacity that can achieve sustained development. p.103
- Project should build on
pre-existing leadership. p.103
- The project design process
should be revamped to emphasize building coalitions and capacities en
route to a design. p.107
- Good implementation does not
guarantee success, but poor implementation is sufficient to block
sustainability.p.116
- Successful development
management is based on internal processes that build and use obligation
and exchanged relationships grounded in the local environment. p.117
- This also suggests that
sustainability requires the augmentation of informal dynamics that push
towards post project initiatives consistent with project objectives.
Sustainability, then, is less the maintenance of project assets than the
enhancement of local capacities. p.117
- The general practice of
informal negotiation was a universal characteristic of success, but its
implementation style and mechanisms had to be context specific to work.
p.112
- Development is essentially a
creative and artistic social endeavor, not a technical procedure or
political dictate. But until development is the primary agenda,
implementation will seldom follow a course that leads to sustainability.
p.118
Cernea, M. (ed.) (1991) Putting People First: Sociological Variables in
Rural Development, Washington, DC: The World Bank.
Conrad Phillip Kottak, p.431-464
- To the extent possible, each
project must have a socially informed and culturally appropriate design
and implementation strategy. p.431
- Putting people first in
development interventions means eliciting the needs for change that they
perceive, identifying culturally compatible goals and strategies for
change, developing socially appropriate, workable, and efficient designs
for innovation; using, rather than opposing, existing groups and
organizations; drawing on participants informal monitoring and evaluation
of projects during implementation; and gathering detailed information
before and after implementation so that socio-economic impact can be
accurately assessed. p.432
- ...each project needs its
own social analysis to reflect its individual features and goals. p.432
- The argument here is that
the most productive strategy for change is to base the social design for
innovation on traditional social forms in the project areas. p.449
- The sociocultural characteristics
of affected people must be systematically taken into account for sound
development strategies. p.457
Norman Uphoff
- ...enlist the participation
of intended beneficiaries as much as feasible in all aspects of project
operations. p.467
- Development expenditures are
likely to be more worthwhile to the extent that projects are planned in
ways that involve the intended beneficiaries in decision-making,
implementation, evaluation, and of course benefits. p. 467
- A participatory approach
means bringing people into not only decision-making but also resource
mobilization and management. p.491
- The exact dimensions,
timing, and purpose of the project must be agreeable to the community or
resource commitments will not be forthcoming or sustained. p.491
- Involving intended
beneficiaries in project design and implementation is one way of bringing
knowledge of past development experience to bear on the new effort. p.494
Chambers
- Evidence has built up to
demonstrate that where people and the wishes and priorities are not put
first, projects that affect and involve them encounter problems.
Bebbington, A., Farrington, J., Lewis, D., and Wellard, K. (1993) Reluctant
Partners? Non-Governmental Organizations, the State and Sustainable
Agricultural Development, London: Routledge.
- Agroecologists have insisted
that sustainable production systems must be based on processes that occur
naturally in ecosystems. p.18
Brooks, H. (1992) Science and Sustainability, Vienna, Austria:
Novagraphic.
- [Sustainability] It is strongly
governed by previous developmental history, and the historical cultural
context. p.35
- Only detailed understanding
of the system in conjunction with all its interactions and the evolution
of the external systems with which it interacts can determine whether a
local activity or policy is truly sustainable. p.38
- For this reason...it is
important to involve many potential "stakeholders" in dialogues
leading up to development planning decisions. In this sense, such dialogue
may be regarded as an integral part of the concept of sustainability in
development. p.40
- [Sustainability] involves
technical, economic, social, environmental, and cultural factors which
interact with each other. p.55
Edwards, C., and Rattan, L., Madden, P., and Miller, R., House, G. (1990)
(eds.) Sustainable Agricultural Systems, Delroy Beach, FL: St. Lucie
Press.
Charles Benbrook
- The system must be
economically viable. p.68
- Social expectations and
cultural norms must be satisfied. p.68
National Research Council (1991) Toward Sustainability: A Plan for
Collaborative Research on Agriculture and Natural Resource Management,
Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
- Sustainability reduces risk.
p.14
- Sustainable agriculture is
often used to refer to agriculture and all its interactions with society
and the greater environment. p.13
- ...adequate economic returns.
- Provision for social needs of
farm families and communities.
- All definitions, in other
words, explicitly promotes environmental, economic, and social goals in
their efforts to clarify and interpret the meaning of sustainability.
Ruttan (1988) "Sustainability is not Enough", American Journal of
Alternative Agriculture, 3(28).
- Any definition of
sustainability...must recognize the need for enhancement of productivity
to meet the increased demands created by growing populations and rising
incomes. 130
Bryant, C., and White, L. (1982) Managing Development in the Third World,
Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
- Projects are not judged
solely on what rate of return they give, but on how much potential they
have for increasing the capacity of agencies to implement development.
p.109
- Designing a project to fit
its environmental context involves assessing resources, possibilities, and
political, social and economic constraints. p.109
- Are the behaviors that
these incentives induce congruent with the projects goals and purposes.
- ...applying interventions
in a way that will distribute their benefits within the project area.
p.110
Lewis, J., and Kallab, V. (eds.) (1986) Development Strategies
Reconsidered, Washington, DC: Overseas Development Council.
"Summaries of Recommendations," pp. 35-46
- ...the domestic demand that
grows out of modernizing agriculture can go far toward facilitating labor
intensive, capital-stretching employment growth, which in turn creates
much of the demand needed to sustain expanding domestic food production.
38
- What seems to distinguish
the East Asian development experience is not the dominance of market
forces, free enterprise, and internal liberalization, but effective,
highly interactive relationships between the public and private sector -
relationships characterized by shared goals and commitments embodied in
the development strategy and economic policy of the government. 42
"A Poverty-Focused approach to development policy," Irma Adelman,
pp. 49-65
- The basic reasons for the
superiority of the agricultural strategy are: 1) agriculture is much more
labor intensive than even labor intensive manufacturing; 2) land
augmenting increases in agricultural productivity generate increases in
the demand for the labor of the landless - the poorest of the poor; 3)
increases in agricultural incomes generate high leakages into demand for
labor-intensive manufactures on the consumption side and for manufactured
inputs of the production side; 4) expansion in agricultural production is
less import-intensive than equivalent increase in manufacturing
production; 5) increases in agricultural output with 'good practice,'
developing country technology are less capital intensive than increases in
manufacturing; and 6) the agricultural infrastructure required to increase
agricultural productivity (roads, irrigation, and drainage facilities) has
a high labor-output ratio. 60
"Agriculture on the Road to Industrialization," John Mellor,
pp.67-89
- Agricultural development
offers a potential for rapid growth in domestic demand for labor-intensive
goods and services. 80
- Technology can be defined
as the skills, knowledge, and procedures for providing useful goods and
services; these skills knowledge and procedures permeate every economic
activity and are constantly being added to and changed by a process of
generation, diffusion, and adaptation that is intrinsic to investment and
growth. All decisions on the allocation of physical resources for directly
productive investments, on increasing human skills, and on strengthening
institutions are a part of the process of technological change. p.142
- Organizations that work
effectively and can change when change is called for are a defining
characteristic of a successful economy. p.132
- It is premature to expect
consistent and far sighted political decision-making in the absence of an
indigenous analytical capability that can define alternatives in a clear
and convincing manner. p.133
Stokes, B., (1981) Helping Ourselves: Local Solutions to Local Problems,
New York: W.W. Norton.
- Local activities also need
the investment of public resources to augment the investment of private
resources by individuals and communities. p.126
- A dialogue at the local
level between bureaucrats and citizens is essential. Such a dialogue would
permit people to explain their most pressing problems, to outline what
they want to do about these issues, and to describe the actions they
expect governments to take. p.127
- National government support
for self help programs can focus on efforts that respond to needs
identified by the community. p.128
- The ultimate success of
government support for self-help efforts will not be measured by the
amount of money dispersed or the number of people who participate, but by
the long-term viability of the social processes funded - processes through
which individuals and communities not only solve problems, but also gain
skills and confidence that will benefit them long after specific
government projects have ended. p.129
- A resourceful leader can
broker the various interests in a community to ensure that the success of
self-help efforts by one group is not achieved at the expense of another.
Being a leader of self-help activities demands more, however, than the
mere definition of a path that others must follow. Leadership requires an
understanding of group dynamics and skill in building a consensus. It
requires someone who can deal with the confusion, the ambiguity, and the
contradictions of participatory decision-making. Self-help activities
depend on leaders committed to their communities and to the proposition
that people are the best judges of their own interests. Above all, they
require people who can lead a group by helping the group to lead itself.
p.129
- The programs made the
mistake of either aligning themselves with local elites, who were often
part of the problem, or bypassing the community power structure
completely, engendering political opposition and undermining their chances
of success. p.127
- The state needs some formal
relationship with community networks to establish which activities and
responsibilities should be left at the local level and which ones should
be centralized, to link national support for self-help activities with
local efforts, and to orchestrate community involvement in self-help
projects. p.131
- By bringing people together
to solve problems, councils could form new social networks that complement
existing ones, strengthening the communities social fabric. p.132
- Neighborhood councils would
also work to bring together the federal government and citizens in new
private-public partnerships. p.132-3
- These partnerships should be
based on the principle that community organizations should match any
government funding for their projects with several times the equivalent in
local funds or donated labor. p.133
- The nature of society - its
culture, traditions, and social norms - will also help determine the
boundaries of self-help activities. p.135
- Self-help programs need to
grow out of political processes in which local groups can shape the
programs meant to help them. p.137
- They will shape people's
sense of their own abilities, determine their future success in solving
problems, and ultimately enable individuals and communities to gain
greater control over their own lives. p.138
- Each individual's efforts to
solve his or her problems and to create new values can be come part of a
broader process of social change. As S.F. Jenck's points out with regard
to self-care, "If participatory care gains wide acceptance, it will
be accompanied by a revolution in the social structure of medicine. The
rigid hierarchical structure in which all knowledge and planning flow
downwards from the physician cannot survive the transition to
participatory forms of care. p.141
- It is too soon to assess the
full social and political impact of self-help activities, but such efforts
can lead to more equitable political systems. p.141-2
- If individuals and
communities can do more to help themselves and if their role in meeting
basic human needs can be institutionalized into local social networks,
then the power that accompanies the ability to solve problems will spread
among a broad segment of a population. Thus, the challenge of building
democratic, participatory societies is not simply a question of revamping
electoral systems or reorganization of bureaucracies; citizens must also
be involved in numerous enterprises ranging from the importance of health
care to the management of industry. p.142
- The self-help process, as
Eugene Meehan points out in his study, In Partnerships with People, is
"a metaphorical time bomb in the culture. Its ultimate repercussions
are beyond calculation, but is justification is found in the essential
commitment to allowing men to make their own destiny as best they can.
p.142
- Today, there is the
opportunity for a quiet revolution, one based on people helping themselves.
p.142
Aliband, T. (1983) Catalyst of Development: Voluntary Agencies in India,
West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press.
- Because of its commitment
to the broad dispersal of power and wealth generating resources,
community-wide improvement, and gradual transformation of past social and
economic patterns, 'community development' is inherently political in
nature. p.9
Lea, D., and Chaudrhi, D. (eds.) (1983) Rural Development and the State:
Contradictions and Dilemmas in Developing Countries, London: Methuven.
- Because these objectives
are concerned with many different and interrelated aspects of rural life
and the realization and unfolding of man's creative potential, the word
'integrated' was prefixed to 'rural development' to indicate a new
multi-purpose thrust of rural planning. Rural development was no longer
solely concerned with agricultural matters, but with all aspects of rural
land, society and economy. Rural development was to be at least in theory,
'balanced', and the related and reinforcing nature of different subsectors
of the rural system necessitated formulation of development policy and
planning similar to that of natural development planning. p.13
- This meant that integrated
rural development planning had to involve the target group, which, in turn,
meant local participation and decentralization. p.13
- While not a nationwide
program, integrated rural development had to be symbiotically related to
nationwide development plans and programs. p.13
- Adding 'integrated' to
'development' is tautological. p.1
- A close study of successful
projects indicates that common elements are :(1) an outsider institution
or individual acts as a catalyst. The local influential groups and leaders
come (sometimes with a lag and some persuasion) to accept the project and
help in its implementation. Local leadership will participate if, and only
if, their position is not threatened. (3) The beneficiaries or clients of
the project perceive benefits of participation and become enthusiastic
about the project. (4) Most successful rural development projects obtained
resources from both these sources (outside and the wealthy class within
the rural area). (5) Adapting existing rural institutions to the project
involved public participation in most cases. p.17
- Whenever any of these are
missing or the economic power base of the dominant group in the rural
community is threatened, the rural development project either withers away
or is abandoned. p.17
- An ideally formulated
workable and consistent development plan would have many facets and be
'optimally balanced'. Optimally balanced implies that different goals and
targets, in addition to being feasible and mutually supportive, should be
achievable with minimum input of effort and resources, ensuring efficiency
and economical of resource use. p.20
- Such a process is feasible
if there is pressure for its success from above and below. p.21
- Local participation in
rural development effort through local decision-making and local
institutions has been emphasized by all nationalist social reformers
interested in rural development. 23
- Complimentarity between
rural development strategy and national economic development strategy is a
necessary precondition for the success of both. p.335-6
- Integration of rural
development planning with national development planning is essential if
successful micro-level programs have to be adopted effectively as part of
a national strategy. p.336
- The mechanisms for inducing
local participation can be ideological, institutional, or locally generated
by specific issues. The basic thing is that they must be induced somehow,
for involvement of the rural people in some way is a precondition for
success in rural development.
Korten, D., and Klauss, R. (eds.) (1984) People Centered Development:
Contributions Toward Theory and Planning Frameworks, CT: Kumarian Press.
- The performance of a
production system must therefore be assessed not only in terms of the
values of its products, but also in terms of the range of society it
includes as participants and the quality of the work life it provides for
them. p.300
- The social techniques of
people centered development...use of frameworks of human ecology in
analysis of production choices and performance not only internalizes
people and environment but makes the very foundation of the analytical
process. p.300-1
- Achieving the purpose of
people centered development implies a substantial decentralization of
decision-making processes. p.301
- Decision-making must truly
be returned to the people, who have both the capacity and the right to
inject into the process the richness - including the subjectivity - of
their values and needs. p.301
- If central controls over
resources and essential services are relaxed, they must be replaced by new
and appropriate mechanisms that place control in the hands of those whose
lives they affect, rather than in the hands of officials who bear little
of the consequences of their actions. The necessary mechanisms are built
and institutionalized in local structures and values only with time. p.301
- Achieving a society which
is both oriented to people-centered purposes and at the same time
consistent with existing technical, social, environmental, and political
realities is likely to involve structural and normative changes, as well
as development of new society and technology capabilities throughout
society. Three themes are basic: 1) focus public policy thought p.301 and
action on the creation of enabling settings which encourage and support
people's efforts to meet their own needs and to solve their own problems
at individuals, family, and community levels, 2) developing organizational
structures and processes that function according to the principle of
self-organizing systems, and 3) developing territorially organized
production-consumption systems based on principles of local ownership and
control. The changes implied cannot be mandated and will not occur
abruptly. They must emerge through evolutionary process, as an outgrowth
of the efforts of countless individuals. These can be greatly facilitated
by the appropriate choice of social technique. p.302
- The creation of enabling
settings ...almost inevitably requires fundamental reorientation in the
purposes, structures, and operations of government bureaucracies - away
from direct service delivery or resource management to local capacity
building and support. p.303
- Local self-reliance as a
development strategy involves giving first priority to the creation of
conditions that enable the people of an area better to meet their own
needs using local resources under local control. Where local needs cannot
realistically be met locally, they are met through external markets, to
which the area's surplus production is sold as well.
- The performance of both
territorial and functional organizational units is judges by the extent to
which they contribute to the creation of enabling settings for
self-reliant local development, the maintenance of community links between
local units, and the development and exchange of technical knowledge for
local adaptation and application. p.308
- If people centered
development is to emerge, it will be an offspring of the production
centered industrial era. p.309
- The industrial era has been
a period of remarkable human accomplishment, creating potentials for
advancement to a new evolutionary stage in which all people may have the
opportunity to become and grow as full human beings. There is reason to
believe, however, that realization of the same potential that was a
product of the old paradigm will come only through relying?? on the alternative
ideas, values, social technique, and technologies of people centered
development. p. 309
National Environment Secretariate, Clark University, Egerton University, and
World Resources Institute (1991) Participatory Rural Appraisal Handbook,
Worcester, MA: National Environment Secretariate, Clark University, Egerton
University, and World Resources Institute.
- ...the methodology [PRA]
assumes that popular participation is a fundamental ingredient in project
planning; that locally maintained technologies as well as sustainable
economic, political, and ecological systems are fundamental to reverse
Africa's decline; and that truly sustainable development initiatives will
incorporate approaches that local communities themselves can manage and
control. p.2
- Communicating these core
elements of success to target groups and collaborating with agencies
outside the village may, over the long-term, promote decentralized,
small-scale natural resource management policies and foster a growth of
self-reliance in the communities themselves. p.3
- Its [PRA] goal is socially
acceptable, economically viable, and ecologically sustainable development.
p.5
- PRA assumes that
communities need committed local leadership and effective rural
institutions to do the job. p.5
- PRA can help integrate
relevant sectors in rural development by focusing on natural resources.
p.5
- Derived and managed by
those who most benefit through their implementation, VRMPs offer a
practical means for facilitating community self-help initiatives. p.6
- Using the theme of natural
resource management to integrate development sectors, PRA facilitates
multi-sectoral (for example, agriculture, water resources, forestry),
multi-disciplinary (economics, sociology, engineering, biology), and
multi-institutional (government, NGO, university, donor) collaboration.
p.6
- ...a community with a
specific problem such as deforestation may request assistance, based on
its familiarity with work that PRA has initiated in a nearby community.
p.7
- During the initial visit,
the PRA team should encourage the community to examine past successes
carefully in order to understand the root causes underlying these
performances. p.10
- At every step, the PRA team
leader should keep local administrative officers and the community fully
informed about progress of the PRA exercise. p.10- Their purpose [PRA
& RRA field data approaches) are not scientific perfection, but
flexible program and project design. p.12
- PRA uses a diversity of
sources, including the assembled lore of the villagers themselves, to
insure that comprehensive information is collected. p.12
- Most decisions on resource
management are made and implemented at the household level. p.22
- Every community has a
heritage of experience and environmental knowledge that influences present
attitudes and behaviors. A time line is a list of key events in the
history of the community that help identify past trends, events, problems,
and achievements in its life. p.25
- Rather than defining what
is "important" for them, ask the elders to identify events that
shaped and otherwise influences individual and community activities. p.26
- ...the very process of
discussing trends in resource use in different groups will bring out
important resource management issues for preparing the VRMP. 29
- It [ a seasonal calendar]
identifies cycles of activity that occur within the life of a community on
a regular basis and helps determine whether there are common periods of
excessive environmental problems or opportunities over the course of a
normal year. p.35
- ...if a sector is clearly
emerging as an area in which to act, carrying out pre-feasibility reviews
makes the village ranking meeting more effective. p.52
- A primary goal of the PRA
exercise is to initiate an interactive process between the community and
the PRA team so that a VRMP can be prepared.
- Once problems and
opportunities have been listed, the major task of ranking them remains.
This may be the most important step in PRA since it enables village
leaders, local development committees, representatives of key institutions,
and others to join with technical officers, NGO staff, donors, and other
interested parties to discuss and agree upon priorities. 61.
- Ranking problems and
opportunities...creates community awareness of an information base
oriented toward them and their needs. p.61
- ...the plan [VRMP] can help
external donors and implementing agencies determine whether the
community's common development goals are in line with their own
priorities. p.69
- The community takes the
lead in developing the VRMP. the extension staff and the research team act
as facilitators and make technical information available to the community
to help them come to rational decisions. It is also preferable to involve
NGOs and donor agencies in this activity because in many cases, external
input, especially funds, technical support, and training, may be critical
for the success of the VRMP. If these p.69 groups are present while the
plan is being prepared, they may be more likely to help implement it. p.70
Chambers, R. (1993) Challenging the Professionals:
Frontiers for Rural Development, London: Intermediate Technologies
Publications.
- Decentralization and
empowerment enable local people to exploit the diverse complexities of
their own conditions, and to adapt to rapid change. p.11
- ...diverse ecological and
socio-economic conditions and personal needs generate their own
innovations, find their own solutions, and determine their own pathways.
p.11
- Major shifts come not from
big decisions, though they help, but also gradually through a multitude of
small decisions and actions which together build up into a movement. p.13
- ...it is misleading to
speak of maximizing any one thing. Maximizing coordination or integration
would paralyze administration. Maximizing local participation would
revolutionize the entire political structure of a country. What is
required is a series of informed attempts to optimize a number of resource
uses in relation to a number of outcomes, not to maximize any particular
one. p.18
- If, for example, a
capability exists in a department of community development in conjunction
with a provincial or regional administration, local participation may
appear an appropriate entry. p.25
- It is one in which common
sense, imagination, sensitivity and patience are more important than any formal
qualifications. p. 25
- What is perhaps new is
treating management procedures for rural development as a field for
systematic research and development and suggesting that it should be a
concern not only of civil servants but also of others, including university
staff. p.25
- Project preparation
guidelines are designed to ensure that proposals are compatible with
lending institution policies, procedures and requirements; and as such
have become instruments of control rather than of aid. p.32
- For decentralization to
work, financial discretion has to be given to staff at the local level.
One pattern which deserve serious trials where it does not yet occur is a
block grant system in which each financial year a sum of money is made
available to local-level officials to spend at the discretion on projects
which accord with centrally-determined guidelines. p.36
- When people are put first,
and the poorer rural people first of all, it is more they who do the
identifying and who set the priorities. p.88
Edwards, M., and Hulme, D. (eds.) (1992) Making a Difference: NGOs and
Development in a Changing World, London: Earthscan.
"Scaling-Up the Development Impact of NGOs: Concepts and
Experiences," p. 13-27
- One of the most important
factors underlying this situation is the failure of NGOs to make the right
linkages between their work at micro-level and the wider systems and
structures of which they form a small part. p.13
- Traditionally, most NGOs
have been suspicious of governments, their relationships varying between
benign neglect and outright hostility. p.16
- The state remains the
ultimate arbiter and determinant of the wider political changes on which
sustainable development depends. p.16
- ...greater success may be
achieved if NGOs allow governments to take credit for progress in program
and policy development, regardless of their own influence in these areas.
p.18
- ...even under the most
authoritarian governments there are often opportunities for progressive
change. p.18
- Successful past experience
means that NGOs have already 'learned' what to do, so that they can tackle
development problems with comparatively short 'start-up' times. p.19
- The characteristics that
are presumed to explain NGOs 'comparative' advantage in local-level
poverty-alleviation - the quality with relationships with beneficiaries,
their flexible and experimental stance and their small size - all require
modification or compromise as expansion occurs. p.19
- Dichter warns, many NGOs
encounter severe problems as they expand and often retain '...cultural
predispositions to non-hierarchical structures and are often
anti-management'. p.19
- NGOs are viewed as the
'private non-profit sector...p.20
- Rather than working
directly within the structures they intend to influence, NGOs may choose
to increase their impact by lobbying government and other structures from
the outside. p.20
- ...'while isolated
instances of local institutional development can be impressive, their
cumulative effect is negligible...what counts are systems of networks of
organizations, both vertically and horizontally'. (Uphoff, 1986, 213) p.24
- A strong case can be made
for supporting and linking grassroots organizations: they 'empower',
relate knowledge with action, are sensitive to local contexts, flexible
and, when collectivities take collective action, can tackle regional and
national level issues. p.25
- Developmental NGOs will not
only forge linkages between grassroots organizations, but they will also
forge linkages with other movements that have related missions - peace,
environment, women, human rights and consumer affairs. In this grand
vision NGOs become a force for dramatic social change that restructures
class relationships and reforms global economic processes by non-violent,
non-revolutionary means. p.26
"NGOs and Rural Poverty Alleviation: Implications for Scaling Up,"
Mark Robinson, pp. 28-39
- In some cases, the
attraction of additional household earnings outweighed traditional
restriction on women's mobility. p.32
- For a project to be
financially sustainable it has to be able to cover its direct costs and
generate sufficient income to make it worthwhile for the poor to persist
with it. p.33
- Projects were more likely
to succeed where their objectives corresponded to the priorities of the
poor, and where the intended beneficiaries were regularly consulted and
involved in decision making at all stages of the project cycle. p.35
- The challenge for NGOs is
to maintain, and even improve, the quality of their interventions while at
the same time scaling-up the impact of such interventions. p.38
- ...closer attention needs
to be focused on the methods and circumstances of withdrawal in order to
maximize the prospects for sustainability. p.38
"Non-Government Collaboration with Bangkok," S. Klinmakorm and K.
Ireland, pp. 60-69
- Neither true replicability
nor sustainability can be demonstrated by pilot projects that are operated
by NGOs and outside the constraints of government structure. P.60
- Both replicability and
sustainability are conditions which must be met before scaling up can be
achieved. P.66
"Multiplying Micro-Level Inputs to Government Structures, J. Mackie,
pp. 70-77.
- ...if multiplying
micro-level inputs can be achieved in a way which integrates well into
existing structures and can be consciously planned, micro-level impact can
also be effective. P.73
Bigger and Better? Scaling-Up Bigger and Better? Scaling-up Strategies
Pursued By Brac 1972-1991," M. Howes and M. Sattar, pp. 99-110
- ...in the absence of a
viable institutional framework, the potential for a horizontal integration
remained unrealized. P.104
"Small, Medium, or Large? The Rocky Road to NGO Growth," R.
Hobson, pp. 125-136.
- Expanding work in advocacy,
working with government, grassroots mobilization, network or expansion of
operational programs all involve linking greater numbers of people working
towards a common goal. 128
Making a Difference? Concluding Comments, M. Edwards and D. Hulme, pp.
211-216
- NGOs must work within the
constraints of government systems - poorly-resourced, poorly motivated
usually bureaucratic agencies that are resistant to change. P.212
- One clear conclusion which
emerges from all the case studies represented in this book is that
institution-building is the critical task facing all NGOs in their search
for sustainable development. 214
Burky, S. (1993) People First: A Guide to Self-reliant, Participatory
Rural Development, London: Zed Books.
- Rural economists have shown
that poor peasants as well as other poor producers will tend to adopt
production strategies that minimize the risk of failure. P.7
- The lack of genuinely
representative local governments prevents the emergence of local
initiatives. P.8
- Any strategy of
development, if it is to be successful, must act upon the factors that
create dependency without creating a new and unbearable high risk
situation. P.11
- ...many rural poor do not
trust each other or their leaders. They will not pool their meager funds
because they are afraid someone will misuse them. 15
- ..."so much stress was
put on the external obstacles to development that the problem of how to
initiate a development process, once these obstacles were removed, was
rather neglected. In fact one gets the impression that the development
perspective implied in dependency theory was the modernization model applied
to a national economy. (Hettne, B., Development Theory and the Third
World, SAREC Report No. 2, SAREC: Stockholm 1982). 29
- Ecodevelopment is therefore
a developmental philosophy that aims to make efficient use of the natural
and human resources of a specific region in such a way that provides in
the minimum for the basic needs of the people living there while at the
same time maintaining a viable ecological environment. 32
- Development necessarily
involves structural transformation which implied political, social and
economic changes. 33
- Does this mean that
development cannot occur in rural areas unless all the macro-policies and
relationships are conducive to local development initiatives? Certainly
not. 35
- Economic activity, if it is
to lead to development, must be carried out on a sustainable basis. This
means that the returns to the activity must be greater than the costs: it
must be profitable. 36
- Perhaps development workers
need to settle down to working patiently over time, directly with people, facilitating
and supporting initiatives arising from the ambitions and priorities of
individuals, groups and the community at large. Perhaps then we can begin
to see the emergence of sustainable development processes powered by
people themselves. 39
- The poor will make changes
when they see that such changes are to their advantage. 46
- New ideas and new behavior
cannot be imported unmodified. 48
- People must feel and
believe that it is their own efforts that are driving the development
process. They must feel that they themselves are contributing the maximum
of their own human, financial, and material resources, and that assistance
from outside is only for what they cannot yet manage themselves. 50
- Participatory action
research demands an unusual degree of awareness and humility on the part
of the investigator. 60
- A true development process
is based on a continuous series of analysis-action-reflection-action. 64
- The only thing that should
end is the intervention of the development workers who should withdraw as
soon as the people themselves can maintain the development process on the
basis of their own initiatives. 70
- Self-reliant participatory
development processes normally require an external catalyst to facilitate
the start of the process and to support the growth f the process in its
early phases. 73
- Change agents coming from
outside the community will be completely frustrated in their development
efforts unless they gain the acceptance and confidence with the poor
people with whom they are trying to work. 78
- Change agents should
promote the broadest possible participation through the emergence of
numerous and varied small groups based on the interests of their members.
79
- Experience has shown that
female change agents are in far better position to work with poor rural
women than male agents. 84
- ...it is possible to
prepare a manual for trainers. 88
- The example set by the
coordinator is perhaps the single most important factor for determining
the success or failure of the training program and the subsequent work of
the change agents in the field. 97
- Projects are not ends in
themselves but a means to strengthen rural people's capacity to organize
effectively. 121
- Trust cannot be imposed or
bought; it must be built up gradually by sympathetic project staff working
closely with the people and sharing their problems and hardships. 129
- Community-wide social
projects allow local elites to demonstrate their social power while at the
same time benefitting all. 166
- Participation should not
only emphasize 'effective struggle' but also constructive conflict
resolution. 170 (DD Solomon)
- Progress in one village
provides a stimulus to the poor in neighboring villages to take collective
initiatives of their own towards self-reliance. 174
- Self reliant participatory
development processes should start on the basis of local resources,
knowledge and technology. 180
- In order to increase
production or improve productivity some amount of capital must be invested
in the factors of production necessary to achieve the desired increases
and improvements. 181
- One of the ultimate goals
of a development agency should be to help integrate each and every small
group into the existing institutional credit facilities where possible.
191
- The best indication of the
viability of a project if the amount of labor materials and money that
people are willing to provide from their own resources. 194
- Without participation, even
appropriate technology can become another form of imperialism that may
increase dependency, exploitation and monopoly by a few. 199
- Sustainable economic
development must be based on savings and reinvestment. 210
Rondinelli, D. (ed) (1993) Development Projects as Policy Experiments: An
Adaptive Approach to Development Administration, New York: Routledge.
- ...project sustainability--the
degree to which assisted activities remained active or continue delivering
benefits to people after international funding ended... 2
- In theory, projects would
promote economic changes by integrating markets, linking productive
activities in the public and private sectors, providing the organization
and technology for transforming raw materials into economically and
socially useful products, and creating physical infrastructure needed to
increase exchange and trade. 5
- ..."there are many
cases where the shortage of good projects is even more serious than the
shortage of capital or foreign exchange." (UN, 1969:69) 6
- "Few projects can
survive a rigid blueprint which fixes at the time of implementation the
development approaches, priorities, and mechanisms for achieving success.
Most projects scoring high on success experienced at least one major
revision after the project [managers] determined that the original plan
was not working." A large degree of flexibility is critical
"particularly if the technology is uncertain or if local constraints
facing small farmers are not well known." (Morss et al, 1975:329). 7
- Planning must be viewed as
an incremental process that tests propositions about the most effective
means of coping with social problems, reassessing and redefining both the
problems and the components of development projects as more is learned
about their complexities and about the economic, social, and political
factors effecting the outcome of proposed course of action. Complex social
experiments can be partially guided but never fully controlled: thus,
analysis and management procedures must be flexible and incremental,
facilitating social action so that those groups most directly effected by
a problem can search for and pursue mutually acceptable objectives. 18
- Planning and implementation
must be regarded as mutually dependent activities that refine and improve
each other over time, rather than as separate functions. 19
- "When many divergent
views exist, however, the possibility of establishing well-defined goals
that satisfy everyone becomes much more difficult. Even the process of
spelling out goals can result into considerable conflict as each
contending faction struggles to place its own preferences high on the list
of objectives." (Benveniste 1972:70) 21
- This implies that planning
and implementation must be more closely integrated and that project
planning must proceed through a series of stages in order to reduce
uncertainties and unknowns. 24
- Pilot projects are usually
intended to test new methods and technology, to determine their relevance,
transferability and acceptability, and to explore alternative ways of
disseminating results or of delivering goods and services. 25
- Replication, diffusion or
production projects should evolve from experimental, pilot, and
demonstration phases. 26
- It must be kept in mind,
however, that all development projects are somewhat experimental and that
even seemingly routine replications often meet unanticipated difficulties
when projects are transferred from one culture to another. 26
- ...the objectives of
planning should not be to control in fine detail the activities that will
be pursued during implementation, but to increase the opportunity for
those managing a project to take appropriate action as they learn more
about the conditions affecting their activities. 27
- ...a primary purpose of
projects should be to build up gradually the planning and administrative
capabilities of people and organizations in poor countries rather than
simply spending larger amounts of money to build yet another highway or
factory for them. By designing and organizing projects to reduce
uncertainties and unknowns incrementally, integrate planning and
implementation, and use the acquired knowledge to alter and modify courses
of action during project implementation, they will become more effective
instruments of learning and make greater contributions to development in
the future. 27
- The ability of governments
to coordinate their activities among a variety of ministries and agencies
to implement a 'big push' or leading sector strategy (was weak). 38
- Economic development is a
process of changing old ways of doing things, of venturing into the
unknown. It requires a maximum of flexibility, of possibility for experimentation.
No one an predict in advance what will turn out to be the most effective
use of a nation's productive resources. Yet the essence of a program of
economic development is that it introduces rigidity and inflexibility. 49
- What is required in the underdeveloped
countries is the release of the energies of millions of able, active, and
vigorous people who have been chained by ignorance, custom, and tradition.
... These people require a favorable environment to transform the face of
their countries. (Friedman, 1958: 256) 50-1
- [The WB rural-sector policy
paper] 'a special effort is needed to provide appropriate social and
economic infrastructure for the rural poor and it is important to
integrate these components into rural development projects.' (1975:5) 64
- The only effective way of
reaching these groups was to design projects that in some way were
tailored to their specific needs and accounted for their special
characteristics, a task with which international agencies and governments
in developing countries have yet to come to grips. 70
- The complexity of the
procedures used to plan and analyze project proposals, together with the
scarcity of highly trained technicians in most developing countries, has
usually resulted in greater dependence on foreign experts to do the
required analyses and to manage development activities. 96
- Many UNDP projects failed to
strengthen institutional capacity because technical experts simply took
over or dominated the work rather than training their counterparts to
improve their administrative and technical skills. 99
- In many rural areas, the
longstanding and deeply ingrained distrust between rural people and
government officials prevented either side from taking the other into its
confidence. 100
- The transfer of
inappropriate technology also indicated little knowledge of or sufficient
concern about local conditions and needs in planning procedures of
international assistance organizations. Evaluators of the UNDP's (1979)
rural development projects found that " a major constraint affecting
achievement of project objectives id the transfer of technologies without
local adaptation'. 100
- Experience suggests that the
most valuable managerial skill in implementing development projects is not
the ability to conform to preconceived plans or schedules, but the ability
to innovate, experiment, modify, improvise and lead - talents that are
often discouraged or suppressed by rigid designs and centrally controlled
management procedures. 103
- The projects designers
simply assumed that increased agricultural activity would generate larger
profits, an assumption that turned out to be highly questionable. 109
- "Social acceptance
became a particular problem in irrigation projects where nomads were
expected to be available for scheduled work in their fields at time
periods which apparently clashed with their livestock herding
interests." (Thimm, 1979:48) 110
- ...experimental projects are
needed when problems are not well defined, elements or characteristics of
a problem have not been clearly identified, alternative courses of action
have not been widely explored and their impacts cannot be easily
anticipated. 121
- Pilot projects can perform a
number of important functions: they can test the applicability of
innovations in places with conditions similar to those under which
experiments were performed; they can test the feasibility and
acceptability of innovations in new environments; and they can extend an
innovations range of proven feasibility beyond the experimental stage. 132
- A substantial amount of evidence
from evaluations of rural irrigation projects also documents the
importance of community participation in design and management in
improving efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability. 134
- Participatory systems
allowed farmers to adapt and modify the irrigation canals and structures
more frequently to their own needs and thereby made the systems more
functional over time. Those communities with high rates of participation
had a much more decentralized structure, broader representation in their
leadership, and more decentralized management of irrigation systems than
did non-participatory projects. 135
- The success of pilot
projects also frequently depends on the support of strong leaders who are
motivated by community spirit. 135
- ...the following factors
must be considered carefully in formulating and implementing pilot
projects: (1) the basic knowledge, information, and wisdom of people
concerning their own living conditions, perception of problems,
identification of needs, and desirability and practicality of new methods;
(2) the specific and unique ecological characteristics of areas into which
innovations will be introduced, not only natural and physical conditions
but also their relationships in supporting human and animal life; (3) an
understanding and respect for the diversity of cultural values and norms
found within communities, their amenability to change and the degree of
control that local people have over the factors that create, maintain, and
alter those values; (4) cultural traits that shape individual behavior and
attitudes toward change; (5) the formal and informal authority
relationships within communities into which changes will be introduced;
(6) the leadership patterns and channels of cooperation, participation, interaction,
and communication within the community; and (7) attitudes towards risk,
achievement, and motivational incentives. 136
- Effective demonstration
projects should: (1) offer low risks for participants; (2) provide visible
and substantial benefits at the farm level; (3) offer participants regular
access to cash incomes; (4) assist peasant farmers with meeting recurrent
costs after the innovation is introduces; (5) avoid expanding welfare
service before there is a production base that can yield revenue to pay
for them; (6) use innovations that do not depend for their adoption on
loan financing in the initial phases; (7) consider the log-term effects of
technology transfer because these may be quite different from immediate
effects; (8) not be implemented in a way that bypasses local officials,
who will remain long after technicians and managers who initiated the
project have moved; and (9) build administrative capacity on small and
incremental, rather than on large scale and complex, activities that have
a higher probability of succeeding. 140
- demonstration projects must
generate immediate and direct benefits for participants in the form of
improved living conditions or higher incomes. Without visible and
immediate benefits, participation is likely to be weak, and those who are
convinced to participate may do so apathetically or be distracted by other
activities. 140
- ...if farmers are to assume
a larger share of the risks in agricultural demonstration projects that
use transferred technology, they must be protected from losses through
direct compensation, crop insurance, subsidies, incentives, or provision
of low cost inputs. Demonstration projects should have a short pay-off
period. The new methods should be available to all individuals and groups
who are interested in and capable of replicating them. 140
- Demonstration projects must
be located carefully and tailored to local conditions. 140
- In nearly every developing
country poor people's distrust of public officials makes them suspicious
of projects sponsored by national or local government agencies. Moreover,
innovations may be resisted because poor people, having lived with
existing conditions all of their lives, do not feel the same urgency for
change as project staff. The fear of risk is especially important among
those living at subsistence levels because the loss of meager assets
endangers their survival. 141
- ...strategy for introducing
demonstration projects: - standardize the program as much as possible,
consistent with variations in local conditions, so that adoption is easier
and management more efficient;- integrate projects into the economy of the
area by convincing as many suitable farmers as possible to adapt the
program; - saturate the area with promotional activities, even if it means
over promoting the program in the early stages; - concentrate initial
projects in a limited number of areas to prevent overextension of
resources and manpower; and - accelerate the program rapidly each year
after the success of the project has been effectively demonstrated. 141-2
- Demonstration projects must
be gradually and carefully introduced into communities. Experience with
community development projects in Asia suggested that a series of
well-tested steps should be followed to introduce innovations and that the
beneficiaries must be organized to accept them. 142
- When projects are aimed at
the poorest groups in a community they must be class-biased and
deliberately designed to increase the autonomy, self-reliance, and
political influence of groups that are usually economically dependent and
politically powerless. 142
- [Haque, 1977] suggested a
number of criteria for evaluating demonstration projects, including: (1)
changes in the economic base of the community and in the distribution of
economic benefits; (2) changes in attitudes and behavior of beneficiaries
as expressed in their increased self-reliance, solidarity, and collective
and creative activities; and (3) changes in the ability of people to
initiate and carry out development projects on their own. 143
- ...'many problems do not
become fully apparent until a large scale operation has been reached. In
effect, more of the system is tested in demonstration projects because
logistics and support mechanisms, a full range of personnel, and other
needs must be met to integrate all of the organizational and physical
inputs. (Weiss et al., 1977:99) 143
- A study of a large sample of
USAID projects concluded that "sustainability ratings on project
involving outreach to dispersed participant or client groups are closely
related to the degree to which those groups are involved in policy-making,
planing and program management" (kean et al, 198:48). 144
- 'Aggressive public relations
efforts during the fieldwork are a necessary part of the pilot project's
life if eventual adoption is an objective.' (Pyle, 1980:143)
- (Moris, 1981:24) found that
certain principles are essential for adaptive and responsive
administration. - The project should be kept under the control of a single
organization, but contacts should be maintained with others that can
support and promote its activities; - staff should be recruited from among
qualified people who have served in the area will the project will be
located; - political constraints should be taken seriously and, when it is
possible, the priorities of politicians who can affect the success of the
project should be accommodated. 151
- Although it may be necessary
to standardize and institutionalize many tasks during replication and
dissemination, care must be taken to maintain an adaptive approach to
administration. Standardization is possible, but often risky. 151
- 'In Mexico, exchange
relationships bind pubic officials from various institutions together for
the pursuit of policy goals: they serve to connect individuals within one
agency for defense against the functional encroachments of another; they
tie the bureaucratic elite to the political chiefs and make possible
intra-governmental problem solving; and the manner in which they link the
nationally oriented regional elite to the bureaucratic center is useful in
understanding problems of policy implementation. 152
- Without strong
administrative and political support, conventional methods of planning and
management are inadequate to facilitate project implementation or to
promote the adaptive and responsive approaches to administration. 153
- In their review of How
the West Grew Rich, Rosenberg and Birdzell (1986:33) point out that
the industrialized countries succeeded in achieving steady economic
progress because they developed a pervasive institutional capacity and the
human resources to innovate and adapt to change. The creation of this
institutional capacity and human resource base depended in turn on the
diffusion of authority, the widespread use of experimentation to find
appropriate technology and effective means of production and marketing,
and the emergence of diverse ways of organizing economic activities. ...
Progress in economic development was thus based of three factors:
autonomy, experimentation, and diversity. 154
- The challenge is to find more
appropriate ways of dealing with the inevitable uncertainty and complexity
of development problems and of creating the institutional diversity that
allows experimentation, innovation, and widespread participation in
economic activities. 158
- Ultimately, all development
plans are political statements and all attempts to implement them are
political acts. 159
- ...participants allow their
own actions to be shaped by the interaction of competing interest groups,
by unfolding events, by external forces, and by the unpredictable
reactions of private and government organizations during the course of
political conflict. 160
- Development administrators
must give much more attention to processes of reciprocal exchange,
compromise, formal and informal bargaining and negotiation, mediation, and
coalition building in the process of decision-making if they are to become
more effective in coping with the complexity and uncertainty of
development problems. Once these means of influence are recognized, the
costs of comprehensive planning, rationalistic analysis, and
control-oriented management become difficult to defend. 163
- In an organization that
seeks to be responsive, the dominant goal is to facilitate self
determination among its clients or within the community with which it is
dealing. The role of development administrators is to provide support for
initiatives and to make available resources that will allow beneficiaries
to achieve their development objectives. 164
- (Esman, 1969:13) defined
institution building as "the planning, structuring, and guidance of
new reconstituted organizations which embody changes in values, functions,
physical and social technologies; establish, foster and protect new
normative relationships and action patterns; and, obtain support and complementarity
in the environment. 166
- Institution-building
strategy was concerned not only with strengthening the administrative
capacity of individual organizations, but also with forging cooperative
relationships among them. 167
- ...the key to social learning
is not analytical method, but organizational process; and the central
methodological concern is not with the isolation of variables or the
control of bureaucratic deviations from centrally-designed blueprints, but
with effectively engaging the necessary participation of system members in
contributing to the collective knowledge of the system. (Korten,
1981:613). 167
- ...it is necessary to build
the administrative capacity of, and involve in planning and
administration, "organized special publics": interest groups
such as credit unions, women' clubs, irrigation associations, labor
unions, and cooperatives. By actively involving these groups in project
planing and management, international organizations and governments in
developing countries can create constituencies that will support projects
for their members and act as channels of interaction between beneficiaries
and the agencies sponsoring development programs. Once mobilized, these
organization can also begin to generate their own projects, thereby supplementing
and extending the impact of those sponsored by government. 170
- If administrative capacity
for planning and implementing development projects is to be strengthened
in developing countries, then both political leaders and international
assistance agencies must give much more attention to decentralizing
authority, responsibility, and resources. This implies that governments
must decentralize by strengthening the field units of national ministries,
creating or strengthening local administrative units, delegating functions
to regional, special purpose, or functional authorities, devolving
responsibilities and resources to local governments, and involving the
private sector in service delivery. To the extent that economic growth
depends on innovation and change, it also depends on the freedom to
experiment. Such freedom requires the decentralization of authority to
diverse organizations in society. 171
- By decentralizing
development functions to the field officers of government agencies, or to
local governments, more government officials can become knowledgeable and
sensitive to local problems and needs because they will be working at the
level where these are most visible and pressing. Closer contact between
local populations and government officials can also allow the later to
obtain better information with which to formulate plans and programs than
they can obtain in the national capital. 172
- Decentralization can promote
national unity by giving groups in different sections of the country the
ability to participate in planning and decision-making and thus to
increase their 'stake' in maintaining political stability. 172
- Development projects that
reallocate economic resources, increase income, and expand participation
in the economy also create new and potentially more powerful interest
groups that can make claims on and challenge central authority. Indeed,
the creation of countervailing power is often a precondition for
sustaining organizational reforms such as administrative decentralization
and privatization. 173
- Without decentralization and
privatization, it is difficult to develop the widespread administrative
capacity needed to plan and manage development activities in responsive
and adaptive ways. 173
- The difference between more
effective and less effective development projects has often been the
willingness and the ability of government to assist in creating an
organizational framework for mobilizing leadership, sharing power and
decision-making, and expanding economic participation. 175
- ...adaptive institutional
must be designed in conjunction with beneficiaries and open to local
participation and leadership. 177
- ...adaptive institutions
must designed in conjunction with beneficiaries and open to local
participation and leadership. 177
- ...developing countries must
seek the most appropriate and effective means of delivering public
services that support productive activities and look to the private sector
as a crucial part of the institutional network for service delivery. 178
- Adjunctive planning seeks to
facilitate decision-making among a wide variety of organizations and
interests in society, focus attention on solving remediable aspects of
known problems, identify courses of action that move marginally,
incrementally and through successive approximation away from
unsatisfactory social and economic conditions even when
"optimal" or ideal goals cannot be agreed upon, and explore
alternatives on which diverse interests can act jointly. 179
- Strategic planning begins
with what is known and attempts to broaden the base of knowledge and to
formulate alternative interventions that will set other changes in motion,
rather than beginning with sweeping and comprehensive reforms, the
effectiveness and feasibility of which cannot be predicted. 179
- breaking down development
activities into smaller projects could facilitate strategic planning and
increases the possibilities for learning, adaptation and correction. 180
- 'Projects thus are used, not
to carry out existing knowledge, likely to be lacking, but to obtain
knowledge through action. (Caiden and Wildavsky, 1974: 309) 180
- ...strategic and adjunctive
planning focus on the examination of goals in close connection with
emerging values and with the availability of resources to achieve them, and
they encourage interaction with the groups that must participate in or
benefit from projects. 181
- Field administrators must be
trained the recognize the capacity of local residents, regardless of their
social status, level of education, or income, to make important
contributions to knowledge, skills, or commitment to the success of
development activities. 185
- Sustainable and equitable
economic development requires strengthening administrative capacity
throughout developing societies. It implies expanding participation in
economic activities, strengthening the capacity of a wide variety of pubic
and private organizations to plan and carry out development activities,
and increase the access of individuals to resources and opportunities
needed to meet their basic human needs, raise their productivity, and
develop their potential. Courses of action that lead to the attainment of
these objectives will remain complex and uncertain. Planning and managing
development activities seeking to attain these objectives require an
adaptive approach. 185
- Dealing effectively and
responsively with development problems on a larger scale in the future
will depend on the ability of planners and administrators the use more
effectively the political, social, and economic mechanisms of authority,
exchange, and persuasion. 187
- These approaches require
managers who can facilitate rather than control the interaction of those
individuals and groups who have the bits of knowledge, resources and
experience needed to change undesirable conditions and help define more
acceptable courses of action. 187
Benveniste, G., 1972, The Politics of Expertise, Berkely,
CA, Glendessary Press
Caiden, N., and Wildavsky, A., 1974, Planning and Budgeting in Poor Countries,
NY, Wiley.
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Washington, USAID.
Freidman, M., 1958, "Foreign Economic Aid: means and objectives", In
G. Ranis (ed.) The United States and the
Development Economies, New York,
Norton, 259-63.
Haque, W., Mehta, N., Rahman, A., and Wignaraja, P., 1977, Micro level
development: design and evaluation of rural
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Evaluation Reports, Washington,
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Korten, D., 1981, "Management of Social Transformation at national and
sub-national levels", unpublished paper, Manila, Ford
Foundation.
Moris, J., 1977, "The transferability of western management concepts and
programs: an east African perspective, in L. Stifel, J.
Coleman, and J. Black, (eds)
Education and Training for public sector management in developing countries,
NY, The
Rockefeller foundation, 73-83.
Morss, E., Hatch, J., Mickelwaite, D., and Sweet, C., 1975, Strategies for
small farmer development, Washington,
Development Alternatives, Inc.
Pyle, D., 1980, "From Pilot project to operational program in India: the
problems of transition", in M. Grindle (ed.) Politics and
Policy Implementation in the Third
World, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 123-44
Rosenberg, N., and Birdzell, L., Jr., 1986, How the West Grew Rich: The
Economic Transformation of the Industrial World,
NY, Basic Books.
Thimm, H., 1979, Development Projects in the Sudan, Tokyo, United Nations
University
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Assistance of Uganda, NY, United Nations.
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Cooperation, evaluation study no. 2, NY, United Nation.
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and rural development projects", in D. Rondinelli
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stroudsburg, PA, Hutchinson and Rose, 95-139.
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Gap, Boulder, CO: Westview.
- The bottom-up approach,
designated in the 1980s in its most elaborated and ambitious form as
empowerment, calls for attention to health and education, of course, but
also to more effective locally based problem-solving techniques. ... the
approach encompasses the promotion of community development through
self-help, but with greater emphasis on the process itself rather than on
the completion of particular projects. ... emphasis has been on the
sustainability of the process enabling collective decision-making and
collective action as well as any labor-saving or income-producing outcomes
of such action. 21
- The role of the development
practitioner or change agent in such an approach is that of catalyst and
information broker rather than of decision-maker or information giver,
that of promoting self-reliance rather than dependency. 21
- The most important
contradiction he [Marx] saw in the capitalist system was the draining off
of 'surplus value' - the gap between what workers earned for their labor
and what they paid for goods and services - into profits. This gap would
lead to overproduction and underconsumption - thus to economic depression
- as workers became less and less able to buy what they produce.
Eventually a desperate working class would rise up in spontaneous
revolution and destroy capitalism, replacing it with a socialist system,
in which the workers themselves would collectively own the means of
production. After the transitional period in which the working class would
control the state, the state would whither away, unneeded in a classless
"communist" society. 27
- Lenin asserted that
capitalism had been able temporarily to circumvent the problem of
overproduction through the conquest of foreign peoples and the
establishment of overseas colonies. 27
- [The assumptions that underpin
dependency theory] First, economic interest has primacy over culture or
attitude in determining the distribution of power and status in national
and international arenas. Second, the causes of underdevelopment are not
to be found in national systems alone but must be sought in the pattern of
economic relations between hegemonic, or dominant, powers and their client
states. The perpetuation of the pattern of inequality within client states
is managed by a clientele class, which might be seen as the modern
functional equivalent of a formal colonial apparatus. Third, both within
and among states, the unfettered forces of the marketplace tend to
exacerbate rather than to mitigate existing inequalities. That is, the
dominant foreign power benefits at the expense of its client states, and
the clientele class benefits at the expense of other classes. 28
- Even where such transfers
from the developed states generate economic growth, dependentistas
would expect it to be a distorted pattern of growth that exacerbates
inequalities among classes as well as among regions within client states.
29
- Rejecting both the liberal
preference for an unfettered market and the Marxist choice of state
dominance of economic decision-making, International political economists
contend that both state and market have important roles to play and that
on occasion they are mutually reinforcing. 30
- ...class interests that
coincide at one stage of development may not coincide at the next. The
interests of middle and working classes, for example, tend to coincide
early in the process of industrialization but to come into conflict at a
later stage. 34
- Social action projects
having only economic goals initially may give rise to explicitly political
activism. 40
- Grass-roots development
does not necessarily require the prior seizure of the central power of the
state. 40
- Authoritarian or elitist
rule requires that subjects concern themselves exclusively with their own
welfare and that of their immediate family, distrusting their neighbors.
Thus empowerment, or grass-roots development, is by nature collective or
communal. 40
- [Import substitution
industrialization] to encourage domestic entrepreneurs to manufacture the
products that had been imported but were now unavailable. 81
- The real crisis of the ISI
strategy was felt when it became clear that continual growth would be
dependent upon expansion of the domestic market, and that such expansion
implied a far-reaching redistribution of wealth and power. 83
- We have seen that the
introduction of cash cropping often leads to greater concentration of
landownership and to increasing landlessness among former subsistence
farmers. 117
- New cash crops also
generate new struggles over land tenure and further reduce the land area
allotted to food crops, leading to shortages and higher prices for staple
commodities. Any promising new source of income can also be expected to
complicate relations among neighboring countries and to invite
intervention, as foreigners seek to cut themselves in on profits or
marketing arrangements or to suppress competition. 127
- The necessity of coalition
building dictates that legislation or program planning benefiting the
powerless must appeal also to some sector of the powerful. 141
- The lenders' interpretation
of creditworthiness generally results in discrimination against those
whose holdings an ambitions are modest. 147
- The poorest peasants are
often afraid to seek loans from private banks for fear that the bank will
seize their land. Such fears may be unwarranted in particular cases, but
they are not irrational. Likewise, peasant communities have been hesitant
to enter into contracts with government agencies; they are not confident
that they understand all of the ramifications of such contracts, and they
fear they might somehow be tricked. 147
- Investment can rarely be
the solution when the problem is lack of money. 148
- ...if development is to be
sustainable, the unexpected must happen. 158
- Exploitation and racial and
class discrimination may well be built into national and international
systems, but the expression of these evils with which the poor must live
on a daily basis is local. Thus, a requirement for changing traditional
relationships may be the intervention of agents who are not local. 170
- Foreigners, and
particularly young ones, are able to cross the lines of class in a manner
that would be far more difficult for nationals. 170
- [PCVs] Like other kinds of
"field agents", they tend to become "free agents";
that is, their performance in the field is determined by greater measure
by their own imaginations and value systems and by their own personal
interpretations of what their roles should be than by the objectives of
funding or supervisory agencies. 170
- [PCVs] when they perceived
differences between the objectives, wishes, or demands upon them of PC
supervisors, host agency supervisors, and residents of their communities,
they would be most likely to respond to their communities. 171
- The more leverage available
to the field agent and the more intense and prolonged the contact between
agent and beneficiary community rather than to the objectives of the
sponsoring bureaucracies. 171
- Given the fact that the
motives of external donors and/or of host governments may be less than
forthrightly stated, the field agent who takes seriously the publicly
stated goals of a development project (community organization for
self-help) may on occasion find himself isolated. 173
- ...the development
specialist...may find that the information or skills he is expected to
pass on to host country authorities or counterparts are likely to be used
in a manner utterly at odds with his own objectives or the stated purpose
of the program. In such a case, he may find it necessary to redefine his
own role or to sabotage his own project. 173
- Structural
change...requires an unaccustomed unity among the underclasses and
deepening cleavages among elites. 182
- In political discourse,
"stability" may have any one of three meanings. It may mean (1)
the routinization of political and social change in the absence of
conflict; (2) the absence of conflict and the absence of change; or (3)
the absence of structural change, even if such change must be staved off
through conflict. 182
- ...development is a
complicated process, deriving from many different sources and motives - an
art rather than a science and a creature of fortune as much as of
planning. No one, no even those who pay the bill, can control it. 188
- ...development programs
often reinforce each other and acquire political significance through
unforseen multiplier effects. 191
- ...new products,
technologies, and credits have been available or usable only for the
already affluent landowner, and enhanced land values have intensified
struggles that peasants were sure to lose. 196
- ...for those of us, who for
reasons of realism, pacifism, or cowardice, are not likely to engage in
direct instigation of revolution, there must be some alternative to
acceptance of a shamefully inequitable status quo. 199
- Real development, of the
sort we are calling empowerment, will never be neat and orderly and
predictable. For better or for worse, consequences do not derive directly
from any identifiable constellation of motives. But the same uncertainty
that makes development work so frustrating also makes it intriguing,
challenging and promising. 200
Griffin, K., and McKinley, T. (1994) Implementing a Human development
strategy, London, Macmillan.
- There is no automatic link
between economic growth and human progress. vii
- Linking economic conditions
and human lives is the central concern of human development. vii
- Economic growth is a
necessary, but not sufficient condition for human development. viii
- So human development must
be sustainable as well. For models of sustainable human development, it is
necessary to maintain and regenerate all forms of capital - physical,
human and natural. viii
- We regard human development
as the end or objective of development. It is a way to fulfill the
potential of people by enlarging their capabilities, and this necessarily
implied empowerment of people, enabling them to participate actively in
their n development. Human development is also a means since it enhances
the skill, knowledge, productivity and inventiveness of people through a
process of human capital formation broadly conceived. Human development is
thus a people centered strategy of development. xi
- ...the appropriate degree
of administrative decentralization is a secondary issue. What really
matters is the empowerment of local people to identify their own
priorities and to implement programs and projects of direct benefit to
them. That is, development should be seen as a process that is not just
for people but a process organized, guided and undertaken by people. This
in turn implies the active participation of people in the development
process and the consequent need to construct institutions that permit and
indeed encourage that participation. A vigorous civil society, in other
words, is an essential component of a successful human development
strategy. xii
- ...the distribution of the
benefits and burdens of public-sector activities will alter - some groups
will gain and others will lose --and hence it will be necessary to build
political support for human development by creating effective coalitions
of potential beneficiaries. xii
- ...such a strategy
[decentralization] tends to favor labor-intensive rather than
capital-intensive projects, small and dispersed expenditures rather than
small and geographically concentrated ones, and clusters of locally based
programs which are complementary to one another, rather than homogenous
nationwide programs. 7
- ...human development
strategies tend to be intensive in the use of local knowledge, and
governments adopting such strategies are more likely to be successful when
the public administration has strong ties to the grassroots. 7
- ...the need to organize
people around local institutions so that they can actively participate in
formulating and implementing development programs. Participation is of
course and end in itself and the empowerment of people - giving them the
capability to act in furthering their own interests - should be a central
objective of human development. 7
- ...participation in
representative grassroots organizations can make it easier to identify
local opportunities for profitable expenditure and to specify priorities,
identifying which projects are of primary importance and which can be
postponed until additional resources become available. 8
- ...having helped to
determine priorities and design development programs, participation in
functional organizations (irrigation societies, land reform committees,
trade unions, women's groups, cooperatives) can then be helpful in
generating support for national as well as local projects, programs and
policies. ...there is sustained political support for such programs from
those who benefit from them. 8
- ...participation is a
valuable component of a development strategy because it can help to reduce
the cost of public services and investment projects by shifting
responsibility from central and local government (where costs tend to be
relatively high) to the grassroots organizations (where costs tend to be
relatively low). ...it may be possible to organize the beneficiaries of an
investment project and persuade them to contribute their labor voluntarily
t help defray some of the construction costs. This can occur, of course,
only when the laborers do indeed become the principle beneficiaries of the
completed project and this in turn may require that they become the owners
of the assets they construct. 8
- Grassroots participation
plays three roles: it is an end in itself, an instrument for increasing
the productive potential of an economy and a means of generating and
sustaining political support for human development. 9
- Liberating the private
sector could usefully begin by removing shackles which hobble the
expansion and diversification of activities which potentially are
attractive to people with only limited access to capital. 19
- ...compared to conventional
strategy, a human development strategy is more conducive to promoting the
long-term comparative advantage of a developing country. 21
- Even if such an attempt
succeeded [to incorporate the most sophisticated technologies], it would
warp the economy, accentuate inequality in the distribution of income and
produce lower returns than alternative, less capital-intensive
investments. 24
- ...most developing
countries would not be well advised to give top priority to creating a
high level of capacity to investigate and absorb foreign technology. 25
- ...indigenous technological
capacities can be increased most efficiently by giving priority to
constructing the foundation, i.e. by concentrating on basic human capital
formation. ... The acquisition of these essential skills by a large
proportion of the population is the surest way to promote sustainable and
steady technological change. 26
- ...the more broadly based
strategy of emphasizing basic human capital formation is more likely to
result in the adoption of technology that is appropriate to the country's
existing structure of production and is designed to meet the basic needs
of the population. 26
- ...the rate of profit on
private investment varies positively with public expenditure on human
development. At the same time, the benefits of public expenditure on human
development are realized partly as a result of employment generated by
private investment. Public and private investment thus are complementary
to one another. The larger the expenditure on human development, the more
even will be the distribution of income, everything else being equal, and
partly because of its effects on private investment, the faster will be
the overall rate of growth. 28
- ...human development is
neither desirable nor possible without sustainable development. 30
- ...[human development] a
long-term strategy with important implications for short- and medium-term
stabilization programs. Adjustment, stabilization, restructuring - call
them what you will, they mean much the same thing - are tactical responses
to external shocks and internal macroeconomic disequilibria. 36
- Local financial, material
and labor resources can be mobilized in support of clearly-defined goals,
and local communities can be organized on a permanent basis to monitor progress
and ensure that the volume and quality of services are maintained once the
campaigns are over. 38
- Excessively ambitious
targets should be avoided and careful attention should be paid to the
sequence of projects and programs. One of the distinguishing features of
policies that promote human development is that they tend to reinforce one
another because of complimentarities and positive externalities. As a
result, the social benefits of policies frequently exceed by a substantial
margin the private benefits, the margin sometimes depending on the order
in which projects are undertaken. That is, some policies deserve priority
because they facilitate the successful implementation of other policies.
38
- ...the whole is greater
than the sum of its parts and the sequence in which the parts are
assembled effects the benefits of the package as a whole. 38
- In addition to high
returns, investing in primary education has the advantage of bringing
government closer to the people it serves while simultaneously giving people
greater control over their own lives and a basic institution of the
communities in which they live. 39 There is more opportunity for
participatory development, for the active involvement of people in
education, and hence there is a greater likelihood that educational
programs will enjoy sustained support from the community. 40
- Well-conceived
macroeconomic policies can help create an economic environment conducive
to rapid employment creation and higher average productivity of labor. 72
- ...concentrate on the
construction of productive assets, including investments in infrastructure
projects, that can be expected in future to contribute to sustained higher
levels of output and income. 74
- ...the projects should form
the nucleus of a cooperative or workers' enterprise to ensure that the
benefits of the project accrue largely to those who work on it. 78
- ...projects should be
located in areas where local organizations of peasants and workers already
exist which can take responsibility for the management and maintenance of
the assets created. ...failing this, projects should be located in areas
of the countryside or parts of cities where the distribution of land
ownership is relatively equal. 78
- ...an employment scheme can
serve as a catalyst for institutional change, facilitating participation
at the local level in economic affairs and empowering those who at present
are the poorest and have the least amount of power. 78
- Selection and
implementation of projects...should occur at the local level. 78
- The projects themselves can
be implemented by local governments, by peasant organizations, by trade
unions or bo other non-governmental organizations. The objective should be
to involve as many institutions as possible in the identification and
design of suitable employment-creating projects and in the actual
organization of the work. 78-9
- A monitoring system should
be introduced by local authorities to prevent corruption and misuse of
funds. 79
- Landlessness usually is the
primary cause of economic distress in the country-side, but landlessness
typically goes hand-in-hand with an absence of other productive assets,
namely, livestock, implements and other equipment, barns and other
immovable assets. 79-80
- A redistribution of
property rights in land and water, accompanied as necessary by technical
assistance, credit to small farmers and improved marketing, is likely to
improve allocative efficiency as well as the distribution of income, and
there is no evidence that it reduces the long-term rate of growth of
agricultural output. 80
- Land reform...is likely to
accelerate human development because of its effects on agricultural
production and the employment of labor. Output per hectare tends to be
higher on small farms than on large, because small farmers use their land
more intensively (having a higher cropping ratio) and utilize more
labor-intensive techniques of production. 81
- If human development is to
become a reality in the rural areas, governments must reverse their
policies, stop the squeeze on agriculture, and stem the flow of capital
from the countryside. This will require a substantial redistribution of
effort and of public investment in favor of the rural areas. The social
rates of return on such investments in natural, physical and human capital
are likely to be high. 84
- Sustained development, or a
permanent flow of benefits at a given level, requires a constant (or
preferably a rising) stock of total capital. The stock of capital consists
on natural, physical and human capital, and an implication of this way of
viewing development is that sustainability requires that if one component
of the total stock of capital is reduced, it must be offset by a greater
investment in one of the other components. 96
- All environmental problems
- all apparent conflicts between development and the protection of the
environment - can be seen as arising ultimately from either (i) government
failure, (ii) market failure, (iii) missing markets arising from undefined
property rights, or (iv) high discount rates of the poor because of their
inability to sustain life without depleting the stock of natural capital.
98
- In the context of
sustainable development, market failure occurs whenever prices generated
by the market mechanism fail to reflect fully the costs to the environment
and the natural stock of capital of production and consumption activities.
99
- ...market failure is a
cause of defective incentives, not a symptom of excessive growth. The
solution is to correct the incentive system, not to restrain the level or
rate of growth of net output and income. Indeed, well-conceived
environmental policies - sustainable development - would enhance the
overall rate of growth, provided the national accounts are improved and
growth is measured correctly by taking into account all benefits and all
costs of production. 100
- ...in many cases the
alleviation of poverty by providing greater access by the poor to
resources and employment, and by promoting human development, is probably
the most effective policy of sustainable development. 101
- ...provided sustainable
development is interpreted to mean the preservation of the total and
natural stocks of capital at levels which are capable of sustaining
indefinitely the human population at current standards of living, there is
no conflict between sustainable development and human development. 102
- The strategy [human
development] is likely to be most successful where governments are
committed to an open economy, neither based towards export promotion nor
import substitution. 107
- ...if human beings are the
end of development, if enhancing their capabilities and enlarging their
choices is the ultimate objective, then empowerment must be central t what
development is all about. 107
- A human development
strategy, by its very nature - people-centered, participatory, democratic.
109
- Decentralization does not
guarantee that costs will be lower - and in fact the advantages of
economies of scale can sometimes be lost - but it does create a
possibility for mobilizing locally- available low-cost resources, increasing
the influence of intended beneficiaries, giving them a voice in what
services are most needed and how they can best be supplied, and hence
increasing the likelihood that the quality of the public services will
improve. In this sense decentralization can be very cost-effective. 110
- Human development...permits
a more self reliant pattern of development. It is a strategy that
mobilizes local resources, that concentrates on enlarging the latent
capabilities of all people and that ca be financed domestically without
the need to depend on external subventions or charity. Indeed, one of the
attractive features of human development strategy, for those governments
who seek it, is that it liberates a country from dependence on foreign
aid. 118
- This strategy is...concerned
with...the empowerment of people and the liberation of their productive
initiatives and creativity so that they can provide for themselves. Human
development is about freedom and responsibility, liberation and self-help.
119
- Empowerment is an end in
itself and should be judged in those terms and not in terms of its
functional relationship to other worthy objectives such as
cost-effectiveness or efficiency. 120
- Decentralization cannot be
divorced from the political context in which it occurs. If the people do
not exercise democratic control over the central apparatus of the state,
it is unlikely that decentralization of the state will be accompanied by
increased political power of the people. If the political structure is
undemocratic and authoritarian, administrative decentralization is likely
either to maintain or even reinforce central authority. 121
- ...human development cannot
be separated from participatory development. The goal of human development
is to help people realize their own potential, to develop their
intellectual, technical and organizational capabilities. 122
- Political empowerment is an
integral aspect of participatory development. Those from outside the
community - whether representatives of government or non-governmental
organizations - who help people construct their grassroots institutions
can be most effective when they function chiefly as facilitators,
catalysts, or animators. 122
- ...a program of
decentralization is most successful when local government works in concert
with active institutions of civil society, such as community
organizations, trade unions and peasant associations. 122
- Empowerment...is not only
democratic, but may also be efficient. 124
- ...empowerment, human
development and economic efficiency are inextricably intertwined. They are
the principle components of a strategy that puts people first. 124
Pottier, J. (ed.) (1993) Practicing Development: Social Science
Perspectives, London: Routledge.
"Introduction: development in practice, Assessing social science perspectives,"
J.P., pp. 1-12
- The participative
philosophy upholds an empirically founded belief in the managerial
capabilities of vulnerable groups; what the poor lack is access to and
control over resources; what they need is assistance with the removal of
constraints. 1
- An ethnographic
understanding of local conditions reduces the risk that false assumptions
creep into the design of development programs. 3
- Continual ethnography is
the key to successful, cost-effective project management, because the
social worlds within which development effort take shape are essentially
fluid. Production patterns, access to or control over resources, the
make-up of residential units, patterns of social stratification, and so
on, are all liable to some form of ongoing change. 7
- A social science
perspective on the internal dynamics of evolving worlds will take account
of the fact that planned interventions contribute to change. Whether
initiatives introduce new power relations or ideologies or support
existing ones, every intervention remains a political statement the
significance of which must be grasped before programs can be monitored
correctly. 7
- ...development experts must
abandon the idea that replicable, uniform methodologies exist for every
kind of investigation. 9
- ...the development
community is aware that rigid projects fail, and it is mostly agreed that
the remedy is a flexible approach which tunes into the ethnographic
reality. 11
"The role of ethnography in project appraisal," J.H., pp.13-33
- [The 1980s were marked by a
search for alternative strategies] The search implied rejection of
externally imposed models, more emphasis on the needs of the poor (the
very poor, especially), greater respect for the physical environment, a
better appreciation of social forces, more awareness that development
effort must be sustainable and based on policies that are participatory
rather than technocratic. 13
- The core idea in the
project approach to development was that one could be clear about all the
aspects involved: goals, resources, means, results. In addition, because
of their small scale, project could be subjected to detailed, continuous
study with a view to better performance and improved cost effectiveness.
Another hoped-for advantage was that projects would facilitate the
demarcation of every partner's role and powers. 16
- ...'small' remained
potentially beautiful because it remained potentially controllable. 17
- "Project management is
usually discussed in terms of a linear program or of a cycle of activities
that include identification, appraisal, planning, implementation,
operation and maintenance, and evaluation. In the cyclical model,
evaluation leads once again into the preparation of new projects (Curtis,
1985:103)". 17
- [The 'appraisal' phase]
"what will happen if a particular option is taken up, where
anticipated effects will occur, who will gain and lose, when
those effects will occur, and the efficiency of the investment in
relation to the resources used and the benefits derived" (Conyers and
Hills 1984:132). 17
- ...to be able to influence
project planning at the design stage, the practicing anthropologist needs
to be able to advise, for instance, on which forms of local organization,
including new ones, can be used to facilitate the introduction and
acceptance of technically sound interventions. 19
- The agenda is overtly
political. The conditions to be monitored (an ultimately overcome) relate
to access and control. 27
- Anthropological research
suggested a new perspective on the relationship between policy, implementation
and outcomes; a model which portrayed development as a negotiated,
socially constructed, never-ending interaction between many social actors.
27
- "A project is never
realized as a linear process, proceeding in an orderly fashion from
'correct' initial analysis through 'correct' decisions towards 'good'
goals. It is often a messy business of decisions that have to be taken in
difficult circumstances on the basis of inadequate knowledge, reactions
counter-reactions and it always constitutes a learning process for all
involved." (Crehan & Von Oppen, 1988:114). 28
Conyers, D., and Hills, P., 1984, An Introduction to
Development planning in the third world, Chichester: John Wiley and
Sons.
Crehan, K., and Von Oppen, J., 1988, 'Understandings of "Development":
an arena of struggle', Sociologia Ruralis XXVIII
(2/3):113-45.
Curtis, D., 1985, 'Anthropology in Project management: on being useful to those
who must design and operate rural water
supplies', in R. Grillo and A. Rew
(eds.) Social Anthropology and Development Policy, London:
Tavistock, ASA
Monograph 23.
"Agencies and Young People: Runaways and Young Homeless in
Wales," Susan Hutson and Mark Liddiard, pp. 34-49
- It is clear that the
solution to a problem is linked to the way in which it is defined. 48
"Anthropologists or Anthropology: The Band Aid perspective on
development projects", Bill Garber and Penny Jenden, pp. 50-70
- In order to avoid the
implementation of a 'blueprint approach', it is vital that the projects
ensure that the various groups within a community will actively
participate in implementing, evaluating and (particularly) evolving the
project. We would argue that the question of how the development
projects themselves develop is vital in ensuring that technically and
socially appropriate solutions are arrived at. This is the main point:
solutions have to be arrived at; they are the end product of a process
which entails working together with different groups of beneficiaries. 53
- ...in order to be
successful, development projects must require a flexible system which
engages in a learning process by working with and coming to
understand local groups, their inter-relationships and their points of
view. 53
"Anthropology and Appraisal: The preparation of two IFAD pastoral
development projects in Niger and Mali," David Seddon, pp. 71-109
- Projects run into
difficulties...because they fail to consider in sufficient detail the
complexities of local social dynamics and fail to appreciate their significance
for the design and implementation of a successful project. 72
- ...people's participation
in projects effectively reduces the cost involved and helps make project
activities sustainable. 74
- ..."it is people's
participation which provides the internal dynamic essential to the success
of rural development and makes the pilot efforts of the Fund
self-generating and in consequence highly replicable. For the small
holders, the landless, the nomads, agro-pastoralists, poor rural women and
fisherman who constitute IFAD's main beneficiary groups, active
involvement in the design preparation, implementation and evaluation of
projects has become the predominant factor in the alleviation of their
poverty and in their attainment of a more productive life." (IFAD
1989:7) 74-5
- ..."beneficiary
participation is not only an instrument of development, it is also a
development goal itself. Along with the improvement of their material
well-being, poor people are able to afford themselves a mechanism for
democratic self-expression." (IFAD 1989:8)
IFAD, 1989, IFAD Annual Report, 1988, Rome:IFAD.
"Project Appraisals: The need for methodological guidelines,"
Geogg Griffith, pp. 138-152
- ...it is necessary to search
out and listen to the mass of the rural poor, who are the intended
participants in development efforts. This must happen at the earliest
possible opportunity and has to be the major consideration in drawing up
plans for development projects. 138
- ...intuition often develops
through experience and can be shared. 149
"Anthropology in farming systems research: A participants observer in
Zambia. Philip Gatter, pp. 153-186
- By linking together
analysis of the economic, ecological and social production environments of
small-scale farmers, a comparatively rich understanding...should be
achieved, on the basis of which appropriate technologies (namely, ones
that will be adopted by the farmers) could be developed to improve their
productivity. 156
Gsanger, H. (1994) The Future of Rural Development, London: Frank
Cass.
- Rural development, meaning
a multisectoral task having as its object the achievement of both
macroeconomically adequate growth rates in agricultural production and
equitably distributed social development of the rural population... 2
- Economic growth is essential,
but not enough on its own to limit rural poverty effectively. 4
- Unless the people are fully
involved in political decision-making and in the dialogue on development,
it will be difficult to make development measures sustainable. 4
- Needs-oriented and participatory
planning for rural development with a wide impact succeeds only where the
apparatus of state is sufficiently decentralized and administration is
transparent. 4
- The structural foundations
for the necessary dialogue on development are laid only when the
intermediate level (third sector) between government and people has been
developed and strengthened. 5
- ...open planning processes
are more likely to trigger self sustaining development processes than
economically stringent planning. 5
- Raising the level of
intervention and linking program promotion and individual projects will,
however, also require some basic rethinking on the part of the donors,
i.e. they must abandon practices of which they have grown fond, such as
uncoordinated aid policies in which their own profile or supply interests
are more important than the actual needs of the country concerned. 7
- ...new technology further
exacerbated the already marked social differentiation in rural areas. Does
the new technology contribute to a differentiation of economic performance
or does it intensify social polarization, it was pointedly asked. Both
undoubted occurred in the process of technological change; it was already
becoming clear at a relatively early stage that as a rule small farmers
were put at a disadvantage primarily by unequal access to complementary
factors of production (irrigation, water, pumps, electricity) and services
(agricultural credit) and by unfavorable land tenure systems (uncertain
tenancy arrangements). 13
- ...integrated approaches
are deemed to have synergy effects because the whole happens to be greater
than the sum of its parts. 24
- If multiple objectives are
to be achieved, coordinated action (policy cohesion) across sectoral
boundaries is needed. 35
- A project's main role is
then to act as a facilitator or catalyst that seeks to set processes in
motion. 37
- Open planning encourages
development processes. 48
- ...it is now felt that
projects should be seen as intermediary structures, building bridges between
government and people; this linking task requires the project not only to
support the self-organization of those concerned but also the
establishment or promotion of networked (communication) structures and
willingness to play the role of the people's advocate 70 (wide-ranging
involvement of those concerned, transparency of decisions taken by the
administration , the rule of law). 71
- ...effective and
needs-oriented cooperation with a country that is opening up, becoming
democratic and developing decentralized decision-making structures also
requires of the donors extensive local professional and administrative
representation, which many of them do not have at present. 72
- At the end of a fairly long
process the concerted efforts should then bear fruit, and there should be
efficient implementing organizations and sufficient local capacities for
rural development programs to be planned, implemented and evaluated by
countries on their own responsibility, with a minimum of external
intervention. 73
Stevens, J. (1993) The Economics of Collective Choice, Boulder, CO:
Westview.
- The term transfer society
has been coined to indicate that the dominant role of government today is
transferring income, wealth, and utility, rather than producing goods and
services. 12
- In most of the issues,
collective choice involves decisions to modify or replace markets. 14
- economic efficiency is an
end, an objective, or a goal; markets are simply a means or a method by
which this goal might be achieved. 16
- ...even if economic
efficiency is a goal of collective choice, markets my not be an efficient
way to reach that goal. 16
- The key elements of
collective choice are the participants, the methods of choice, and
criteria or reasons for choosing. 21
- ...if someone becomes
better off without someone else becoming worse off, a social surplus has
been created. In normative economic terms, this has been historically
viewed as a good thing. 32
- When economists talk about
markets, they refer t situations where buyers and sellers make voluntary
and independent decisions that result in equilibrium prices and quantities
for goods and services. 56
- The basis of a market is
voluntary action. 56
- "The fundamental
theoretical problem underlying the question of cooperation is the manner
by which individuals attain knowledge of each others preferences and
likely behavior. Moreover, the problem is one of common knowledge, since
each individual, I, is required not only to have information about others
preferences, but also to know that the others have knowledge about I's own
preferences and strategies" (Schofield, p.218, 1985, "Anarchy,
Altruism, and cooperation, " Social Choice and Welfare 2:207-219.)
103
- Jean Gauchos Rousseau
"The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and
protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each
associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with al, may still
obey himself alone, and remain as free as before" 133 'The Social
Contract', in Robert Maynard Hutchins , ed., Great Books of the Western World,
Vol.38, p. 387-439, Chicago, Encyclopedia Britannica. 1763. 133
- ...coalitions are not
really the merging of people but rather the merging of issues that are
important to these people. When a coalition is formed, issues of different
relative importance to two or more groups become coalesced into a smaller
group of issues (or even one issue) that becomes important to everyone
within the coalition. 163
- The first task of the
politician is to discover a service in widespread demand which is
increasingly burdensome for private persons to finance. 75 W. C. Mitchell,
1983, p.94, "Fiscal Behavior of the Modern Democratic State: Public
Choice Perspectives and Contributions", in Larry L. Wade, ed.,
Political Economy, p. 69-113. Dordrecht, The Netherlands:Kluwer-Nijhoff
Serageldin, I. (1993) Development Partners: Aid and Cooperation in the
1990s, Sweden: SIDA.
- ...the domestic economic
policies that a government pursues have an inordinately greater influence
on a country's economic and social progress than any amount of external
assistance. 1
- Developing countries need
more efficient and effective governmental institutions to help the
conceive, implement, and sustain productive economic policies and
projects. ... They need to have roots in the traditional indigenous
institutions that have shown themselves to be better able to evolve into
dynamic and sustainable local institutions. These institutions affect not
only performance of the public sector but also development of the private
sector. 40
- All this points to the need
for institutional developments to reform the scope of the public sector,
public sector management, the relationship between the public and private
sectors, and the management of public enterprises. 41
- ...a convincing case can be
made that promoting the civic community is essential for nurturing good
governance and effective, sustained socioeconomic development. 59
- With this end in view, aid
agencies should fund specific initiatives in support of professional
associations, chambers of commerce and industry, women's groups, local
government, indigenous NGOs, and community organizations. This should be
done to promote private sector and grassroots development as part of a
strategy to strengthen civil society. 59
- ...a low share of public
investment reflects in a lower rate of return as the individual project
(or investor) has to absorb the cost of producing the needed
infrastructural support for the productive activity. As the public share
in total investment rises, so does the rate of return. After a certain
point, the public sector begins to "crowd out" the private
sector in terms of access to credit and resources, and the rates of return
to decline again. 64
- The development of
institutional capacity needs to be emphasized from the outset because
institutional-building takes time and results will not be immediate. 66
- ...encourage associations
that help entrepreneurs to pool their interests and that promote the local
indigenous private sector. 116
- Solutions cannot be imposed
from the outside. They have to be forged by the societies concerned, hence
the need for a process whereby a government, in full partnership with the
urban and rural peoples, identifies the issues, forges its own solutions,
defines a time-bound action program, and implements it. 117
- The interests of
development can be better served by systematic efforts to build a
pluralistic institutional structure, respect for the rule of law, and
vigorous protection for the press and human rights. Intermediaries and
grassroots organizations should be fostered and protected; associations
and local leadership should be encouraged. 199
- Development is like a tree:
it can be assisted in its growth only by feeding its roots, not by pulling
on its branches. 143
McAllister, I. (ed.) (1994) Windows on the World: University
Partnerships, International Cooperation, and Sustainable Development, Nova
Scotia, Canada: Dalhouse University Printers.
International partnerships and development cooperation: introduction and
summary of some main findings," Ian McAllister, pp. xiii-xxv
- The primary functions of a
university, wherever it be located, are essentially three: Teaching and
information exchange; Research and information storage; and Community
service - both within its region and beyond. xiii
- ...the building of bridges
between individual initiatives and development projects and academic
programs has been one of the most difficult but critical components of the
institution building experience. xviii
- When a project leader has sought
to develop partnerships beyond the university - to include community
groups, public and private sector bodies and NGOs - the overall benefits
have probably been more substantial and the project's sustainability
appears to have been more secure. xxii
"Some perspectives on the challenges to the international community of
universities after Ri," Alexander Kwapong, pp. 23-35
- Sustainable development,
both as a concept and as a practical strategy, requires the total
commitment of governments, the private sector, intergovernmental and
non-governmental agencies and not least of all, the international
university community. 26
"Internationalizing the university community in Canada," John
Berry, pp. 37-50
- ...the newer paradigm of
partnership, in which a linkage is something into which both partners
provide inputs and reap benefits at every stage: joint planning, joint
implementation, and joint evaluation. 46
"Teaching, Research and community service: Introduction," Colleen
O'Brien and Neeru Shrestha, pp. 335-6
- Research is an integral
component of a thriving university. Active research opportunities for
students and faculty alike must be sought out and developed. 335
Friedman, J. (1994) Empowerment: The Politics of Alternative Development,
Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
- ...highly centralized forms
of governance generate administrative pathologies: communication overload,
long response times, filtering and distortion of information, a failure to
grasp spatial connections in sectoral programming, and so forth. 79
- ...centralized states tend
to be unresponsive to local needs, and to the needs of the disempowered in
particular. 79
- Restructuring the areal
division of powers by devolving central functions and resources to
regional and local governments thus becomes a central claim to alternative
development. 79
- Underlying an alternative
development is the assumption that humanity is not locked into immutable
evolutionary laws bu that, within limits that must be respected, we have
the ability to achieve a socially just, sustainable, and satisfying life
for everyone. 130
Markowska, E., Szostak, M. (eds.) (1993) State and Development: Towards a
Reappraisal, Warsaw: Research Institute of Developing Economies.
Anna Zorska "State Promotion of Manufactures Exports," pp. 131-147
- Subsidies applied by a
state for stimulating export production my assume either a direct or
indirect form. Direct subsidies consist in effective payments made by a
state for producers of export products. There may be payments proportional
to the value of exports, refunding a difference between internal and the
world prices, refunding some outlays for production and exports. Direct
subsidies are apparent and easy to detect by foreign competitors so they
may commence some retaliatory actions (e.g. in the form of countervailing
duties. Indirect subsidies are of a non-apparent character, so their
application is more convenient. There are various exemptions, allowances,
privileges and premiums which enable reduction and increase in profits in
other activities then exports (but enabling reduction of export prices).
Indirect subsidizing of exports is exerted with an aid of fiscal and
financial means, differentiated rates of exchange and low prices for
products and services delivered by a state sector. 135
Sargent, M. (1986) Agricultural Co-operation, Hampshire, England:
Gower Publishing.
- ...agricultural
co-operatives exist as self-help organizations to serve their members in
two main ways. Firstly, by lowering costs or through a more economical use
of resources. This is achieved through bulk buying and/or manufacturing on
behalf of members or by offering services, particularly in marketing, that
the individual farmer could not easily provide for himself. Second by
exercising the principle of countervailing power expounded by Galbraith.
He postulated that countervailing power arose to offset the opposing
powers of relatively larger scale buyers and sellers in the markets and
suggested that it is the minimization of social tensions amongst consumers
and farmers that is the main effect. 73
- Agricultural co-operatives
are commonly born out of adverse economic circumstances. They arise
locally but may be in response to nationally prevailing conditions such as
cost inflation, depressed prices, changing markets and even war. At the
local level the formation of co-operatives may also result from commonly
perceived needs such as to transport produce to distant markets; to
provide sophisticated and expensive marketing facilities, or to purchase
farm requirements in bulk. The common need, or potential benefit is
recognized by a group of individuals each of whom is already a controller
(entrepreneur or manager) of their own farm business. They establish an
additional business, the co-operative, to act on their collective behalf and
to further their interests. Starting at grass roots in this way has a
better record of success than does imposed co-operation from above. 109
- Farmers and growers seek
co-operative solutions to their problems for reasons of: Economic benefit
[bulk and] or by selling their produce more favorably in the market place
through a co-operative marketing organization; Gaining influence in the
market place. They seek to overcome their relatively isolated location,
small scale of activity and powerlessness in the market place; Gaining
access to services and facilities that would otherwise be denied them.
Highly specialized and capital intensive marketing facilities and skills
may not be accessible to the firm unless they are provided through a
co-operative; Social benefits, such as a feeling of security that may
ensue from collective action and a reduction of working hours may be
possible if, for example, the task of marketing is delegated to a
co-operative. 109
- Management by committee is
usually recipe for failure and a manager may well be appointed at
establishment. 111
- Cooperatives, like the
smaller non-cooperative businesses, are particularly vulnerable in their
first few years. If failure is going to occur it is most likely in this
period and for one of the following reasons. 1. Cooperation may not have
been the appropriate solution to the perceived problem. 2. This particular
form of cooperative may have been inappropriate. 3. Members may have been
disloyal. 4. The cooperative may have failed to win over the market or
develop the new outlets that it was expected to do. 5. The co-operative
may have failed to gain results that could be achieved by the members
operating independently. 112
- ...co-operatives themselves
are most successful when behaving as highly competitive commercial
organizations. 127
- Greater attention to the
provision and quality of management, at the primary level, may well be the
best way of getting more co-operative activity that is also the soundest
commercial footing. 129
Maddison, A. (1970) Economic Progress and Policy in Developing Countries,
London: Unwin University Press.
- There was no scarcity of
entrepreneurship when adequate profit opportunities were created. 168
- ...it is rational to
subsidize or to protect home production temporarily in the initial stages
of industrialization. 196
- Efficiency will increase
over time because of the 'learning process', which cumulates
entrepreneurial experience, organizational ability, managerial and worker
skills. 196
- These efforts to subsidize
the initial phases of export expansion can be justified on the same
grounds as protection of import substitutes, for the initial cost of
breaking into foreign markets is high. 207
Morisson C., Lecomte, H., Oudin, X. (1994) Micro-Enterprises and the
Institutional Framework in Developing Countries, Paris: Organization of
Economic Cooperation and Development.
- This financing constraint
limits their investment capacity and hence hampers their growth. This is
the reason for attempts to improve the institutional framework of the
financial sector and adapt it to the needs and specific features of
micro-enterprises.
- ...the entrepreneur has to
depend entirely on himself, or more precisely, on his own savings and
loans from his family and friends, if he wishes ti invest or if he has
cash flow problems. This explains both his caution, his hesitation when it
comes investing or recruiting, and the number of failures, since cash flow
difficulties which appear to be not terribly serious may suffice to cause
the disappearance of micro-enterprise. 108
Reid, G. (1993) Small Business Enterprise: An Economic Analysis,
London: Routledge.
- ...history was not the most
important factor in determining whether an outside backer would be willing
to provide financial support. The competence and wealth of the owner
manager were the more important. That is, capital, either human (e.g.
skill at market research or business plan preparation), or non-human (e.g.
finance capital available for personal financial injections into the
business), was the key determinant of ability to raise outside funds for
financial inception of the small business enterprise. 73
- Growth generates profits,
and profits stimulate growth. Profits are themselves an important source
of finance and expansion. 200
- ...generating internal
finance for expansion acts as a magnet for attracting external finance,
which can also be put to the same purpose. 200
Narayan, D. (1993) Participatory Evaluation, Washington, DC: The
World Bank.
- The end goal is not to
maximize the participation of users, but to optimize participation in
order to achieve sustainability through human development. 1
- Participatory evaluation is
a process of collaborative problem-solving through the generation and use
of knowledge. It is a process that leads to corrective action by involving
all levels of users in shared decision making. 9
- The most important
principle guiding participatory evaluation is the utilization of findings
at different levels in different ways. When stakeholders are involved in the
process that leads to the findings, the likelihood increases that they
will sue the findings to take corrective action. 9
- Participatory evaluation is
thus crucial when the overall goal of development efforts includes local
capacity building. 9
- Fully involving users means
reaching out to anyone effected by decisions that are made; local
community members, government and community officials; project and program
staff. 9
- When users are actively
involved in data collection processes, information becomes transformed
into knowledge and leads to self-sustained action. 11
- Sustainability is achieved
by building problem-solving capacities in communities and in partnership
agencies to resolve problems as they arise. 27
- Participatory processes in
which people are centrally involved in decision making ensure communities
and agencies will develop the capacity to evolve with new circumstances,
such as changes in demand, interest, capabilities, finance, natural
resources or policies. 27
- Human capacity development
- increasing problem solving ability, confidence, management and technical
skills, knowledge generation - thus becomes the central process in the
achievement of sustainability. 27
- ...in assessing the success
of capacity-building efforts, it is important first to establish whether
the project has addressed a priority need and how people expressed their
commitment... 29
- Self reliance cannot be
achieved without human development. 43
- Confidence and competence
increase when people gain experience in organization and management and
acquire new knowledge and skills, including the capacity to generate
knowledge. 43
- Facilitating sustainability
at the community level requires agencies that are themselves sustainable.
This means agencies that are staffed with competent and confident people
who believe in and support self-reliant development based on local
organizations, local skills and culture. 43
- Sustainability can be
attained with the involvement of a few key local leaders who represent
community interests and serve as the focal point for interaction with
external agencies. However, this approach may not lead to broad based
capacity building. 43
- Replicability is the
capacity to duplicate the processes and benefits of a set of development
activities in new locations after their effectiveness has been
demonstrated in limited geographic areas. 95
- ...the objective is to
develop processes that make optimal use of local resources and can be
adapted in other locations. 95
- At the local level,
replicability allows people to spread the learning and positive effects of
projects or programs through the community, or to new communities. 95
Savoie, D., and Brecher, I. (eds.) (1992) Equity and Efficiency in
Economic Development, London: Intermediate Technology Publications.
"Development, equity, and liberation," by Kenneth Boulding, pp.
51-63
- Economic development is
very closely associated with cultures that have cast aside self-pity, that
develop a strong sense of self-identity, and that assume if there is
something wrong, it is probably their fault rather than somebody else's.
This leads into the release of latent power and an increase in the value
of human capital. 61
"Hunger," Paul Streeten, pp. 212-231
- If productivity in food
production is to be raised, growth of inputs is necessary, and this
frequently depends on importing these inputs. Productivity growth depends
crucially on moving towards machinery, fertilizer, and pesticides, which
often have to be imported and cost foreign exchange. Imports have been
scaled down to the minimum, so that, without extra aid, an increase in
exports is the only solution. Local food production and consumption cannot
be raised without raising exports, but exports can be raised only by
curtailing food for local consumption. Non-project, untied foreign aid
combined with the right policies can transform this vicious circle into a
virtuous one. 223
"New Directions in Canada's Foreign Aid? The Winegard Report and
Beyon," Irving Brecher, pp. 247-288
- "Decentralization is
not a cost free process - financially, administratively or politically.
Financially it entails spending a large portion of the aid budget on
administration; administratively, it means losing some control at the
center; and politically, it means accepting the risks of an aid program
truly responsive to the needs of our developing country partners. We
strongly support decentralization only because we are convinced that its
costs are far outweighed by its likely benefits." Standing committee
of the house of commons on external affairs and international trade, For
Whose Benefit?, report on Canada's official development assistance
policies and programs (Ottawa: House of commons 1987)
Singh, N., and Titi, V. (eds.) (1995) Empowerment: Towards Sustainable
Development, New Jersey: Zed.
"Empowerment for Sustainable Development: An Overview," Naresh
Singh and Vangile Titi, pp. 6-28
- Elements of empowerment
include: 1) Local self reliance, autonomy in decision making processes of
communities at village level, and direct participatory democracy in the
larger process of representative government. 2) Provision of space for
cultural assertion and spiritual welfare, and experimental social
learning, including the articulation and application of indigenous
knowledge, in addition to theoretical/scientific knowledge. 3) Access to
land and other resources, education for change, and housing and health
facilities. 4) Ability to achieve food and sustain self-sufficiency. 5) Access
to income, assets and credit facilities, and the ability to create credit
facilities. 6) Access to knowledge and skills (both indigenous and
external) for the maintenance of constant capita stock and the
environmental sink capacity. 7) Access to skills training, problem-solving
techniques, and best available appropriate technologies and information,
without which the knowledge and skills become virtually useless. 8)
participation in decision-making processes by all people, in particular
women and youth. 14
"Law Reform for Sustainable Development: Legalizing Empowerment,"
David VanderZwaag, pp. 68-79
- Since natural resource
conflicts often involve questions of values - recreational, aesthetic and
spiritual- and conflicts of interests, public involvement is seen as
essential to increase understanding among residents, government managers
and industry proponents and to facilitate conflict resolution. 73
World Bank (1994) Making Development Sustainable, Washington, DC: The
World Bank Group and the Environment.
- ...environment plans must
strike a balance between the desire to address a multitude of complex
environmental problems and local institutional capacity. 14
Mikesell, R. (1992) Economic Development and the Environment: A
Comparison of Sustainable Development with Conventional Development Economics,
London: Mansell.
- National self-interest also
limits the willingness of countries to assist others in achieving a
condition of sustainability, except when it is in the donor's interest to
do so. 17
- ...a national commitment to
sustainable development will be largely confined to the resources of the
nation or possibly to regions within nations. 17
- Sustainable development is
not achieved by policy statements of government officials or by officials
of the World Bank. Sustainability must be embodied in particular projects
and programs, and in the criteria for evaluating and selecting projects.
23
- Although it is not possible
to embody all the attributes of sustainable development in a single
project or program, it should be possible to design a project that is
consistent with the sustainability of the value of the natural resources
used in the project. This means that the productivity of the resource
would be maintained over time, either by renewing the resource or by
investing in other capital assets an amount equal to the capital value of
that portion of the resource that has been depleted by the construction
and operation of the project. 23
- Sustainable development in
agriculture calls for fewer and smaller irrigation dams in favor of
replacing old systems, and multipurpose dams should make agriculture
rather than power their primary function. 29
- Sustainable development is
not premised on a no-growth condition, nor does it require that wealthy
nations forgo per capita growth to permit developing countries to survive.
33
- Sustainable development
also broadens conventional development objectives by including the
preservation of the natural resource base to enable future generations to
carry on at least an equivalent level of current economic activity. 34
- Sustainable development is
a revolutionary political and social concept. It will not succeed without
the conviction and participation of the masses of people who must bring it
about. Gaining that conviction and participation is a more important
challenge for external assistance agencies than providing capital and
technical assistance. 146
Otero, M., and Rhyne, E. (eds.) (1994) The New World of Micro-Enterprise
Finance: Building Healthy Financial Institutions for the Poor, West
Hartford, CT: Kumarian.
"Savings Mobilization and MICRO ENTERPRISE Finance: The Indonesian
Experience," M. Robinson, pp. 27-54
- Two widespread myths
prevail with regard to household savings in developing countries,
particularly in rural areas. The first is the myth of pervasive rural
undersavings; the second is the assumption that the demand for financial
savings instruments is low in most rural areas of developing countries.
... The reasons for low institutional deposits, however, are neither undersavings
nor lack of demand for financial savings instruments, but the structure of
services and institutions. 28
- Local savings mobilization
benefits the economy directly by increasing the resources available for
productive investment. 38
"The process of institutional development: Assisting small enterprise
institutions become more effective," E. Edgcomb and J. Cawley, pp. 76-93
- Institutional development
is not static. It is organic and evolving. It affects all facets of an
organization and it implies learning, adaptation, and change. 76
- Institutional development
is not a goal. It is a means to solve problems, create a more favorable
economic and policy environment, and improve the quality of people's
lives. 77
- Vision is the ability to
think creatively and critically about the organization. Vision is guided
and formed by basic principles and beliefs that define the mission and
purpose of an organization. It articulates a picture of the world that
would result from the successful achievement of an organization's goals.
It is important that vision grow out of, and respond to, locally defined
needs.79
- Capacity is the ability to
move thinking to action. It is the institution's ability to organize
itself to achieve its mission effectively and efficiently. 79
- Strategic planning provides
the opportunity for an organization to think critically about its mission
and purpose and how they will be achieved. A successful organization works
from an internally driven strategy that grows out of locally identified
needs and is sensitive to local environment and culture. Its plans reflect
the capabilities of the organization and its commitment to
cost-consciousness and self-financing. 83
- During the preparation and
start-up phases, organizations must begin to develop financial management
systems that are flexible and expandable. Otherwise, an organization will
quite likely find itself stymied by systems that lack the sophistication
required to handle a larger operation. If possible, financial management
systems should be computerized at the outset to avoid destructive data
transfer; to enable the institution to track the income and expenses; to
input data once for all levels of analysis; and to generate key reports on
disbursements, repayment, delinquency, interest earned, and the
performance of field workers and offices. 84
"Credit Unions: A Formal sector alternative for financing MICRO
ENTERPRISE development," J. Magill, pp. 140-155
- As cooperatives, they are
organized and operated according to basic cooperative principles: There
are no external shareholders; the members are the owners of the
institution, with each member having the right to one vote in the
organization. The policy-making leadership is drawn from the members
themselves, and in new or small credit unions these positions are unpaid.
140
Walzer, N. (ed.) (1995) Local Economic Development: Incentives and
International Trends, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
"Local Economic development: Policy or politics," M. Keating, pp.
13-30
- A development coalition is
here defined as a place-based, interclass coalition devoted to economic
growth in a specific location. It will include local political leadership
together with business interests.22
- Development coalitions may
provide new ways of reconciling social and distributive goals with
development or even rendering them mutually reinforcing. 23
- Local compromises among the
varying objectives and interests in development are worked out in
individual places according to the balance of forces and the external
economic and intergovernmental environment. 28
"The bureau-politics of economic and development and urban renewal in
Britain," B. Jacobs, pp. 31-52
- Local governments act as
planning facilitators for the private sector and mediators between the
locality and central government. Partnerships enable conflicting interests
to be coordinated and redefined in terms of the shared vision. 33
"When the going gets tough: changing local economic development
strategies in Sweden," J. Pierre, pp. 53-72
- ...engaging in the development
of local business organizations and public-private committees is
attractive, both because they are inexpensive and also because they give
locales the same type of institutionalize networks as found in other
municipalities. This development can prove important for several reasons.
For example, it might help manage the local economy in recession, and it
offers capabilities to offer a more expansionist and strategic local
economic development policy once the national economy improves. Finally,
since mobile companies usually consider the openness of the local
authority as one aspect of a potential investment site, viable
public-private networks may be an important asset for the local in the
competition between locales. 65
- In recessions, private
businesses tend to insulate themselves from interaction with public
institutions. 67
"Does the local context matter? The extent of local government
involvement in economic development in Sweden and Britain," C. Hudson, pp.
73-101
- A picture emerges of local
economic policies shaped by a combination of economic constraints mediated
through the values and ideologies of the actors involved and influenced by
regional variations in the local political culture concerning the role of
local government in the local economy. ...a local government's ability to
intervene in the local economy and respond to local circumstances is also
effected by its autonomy vis-a-vis national government. 98
Fosler, R. (1991) Local Economic Development: Strategies for a Changing
Economy, Washington, DC: International City Management Association.
"The meaning of economic development," Edward Blakely, pp. 21-32
- Communities large and small
need to understand that, no matter how depressed or wealthy they are,
local government, community institutions, and the private sectors are
essential partners in the economic development process. 23
- Concentrating on building
the social and institutional network creates the inducing environment for
a firm to develop or locate in a community. In essence, if the structure
is organized in the correct manner, economic activity will ensue and it
will not have to be pursued. 31
- ...local economic
development is a process that emphasizes the full use of existing human
and natural resources to build employment and create wealth within a
defined locality. 32
Rondinelli, D., and Cheema, S. (eds.) (1983) Decentralization and
Development: Policy Implementation in Developing Countries, Beverly Hills,
CA: Sage.
"Implementing Decentralization Policies: An Introduction," D.R.
and G.S.C., pp. 9-34
- It has become clear that
the impacts of changes in political and administrative organization are
rarely neutral: They advance the interests of some groups in society over
those of others, alter the patterns of resource allocation among regions
and localities, change the distribution of income and wealth, expand or
contract the scope of political influence, and increase or restrict
citizen's access to policy- makers and to decision-making processes. 9
- Decentralization might
allow greater representation for various political, religious, ethnic, and
tribal groups in development decision-making that could lead to greater
equity in the allocation of government resources and investments. 15
- Decentralization could lead
to the development of greater administrative capability among local
governments and private institutions in the regions and provinces, thus
expanding their capacities to take over functions that are not usually
performed well by central ministries, such as the maintenance of roads and
infrastructure investments in areas remote from the national capital. It
could also give local officials the opportunity to develop their
managerial and technical skills. 15
- Decentralization could also
provide a structure through which activities of various central government
ministries and agencies involved in development could be coordinated more
effectively with each other and with those of local leaders and
nongovernmental organizations within various regions. 15
- Decentralization an
increase political stability and national unity by giving groups in
different sections of the country the ability to participate more directly
in development decision-making, thereby increasing their "stake"
in maintaining the political system. 16
- By reducing diseconomies of
scale inherent in the overconcentration of decision-making in the national
capital, decentralization can increase the number of public goods and
services - and the efficiency with which they are delivered - at lower
cost. 16
- ...it is the network of
interaction - the linkages that local governments have with other
organizations - that determines their ability to provide services and
generate development. 24
"Decentralization of development administration in East Africa,"
D.R., pp. 77-125
- Crucial political,
economic, and social preconditions must be established before
decentralization becomes feasible on a large scale, and other conditions
must be encouraged as decentralization occurs. 118
- ...the successful
implementation of decentralization requires trust and respect between
citizens and public officials and recognition of the important roles that
each can perform in the development process. 119
- Communication systems must
facilitate mutual interaction, exchange of information, cooperation, and
conflict resolution, rather than simply disseminating instructions from
the central government. 120
"Centralization and decentralization in Latin America", 183-202,
Richard Harris
- Decentralization manifests
itself in the creation of relatively autonomous agencies and enterprises
that can carry out specific functions with greater flexibility and speed
than the traditional ministries. 190
"The role of voluntary organization," G.S.C., pp. 203-229
- Cooperative societies and
organizations of subsistence farmers and sharecroppers have a greater
likelihood of being heard by government agencies than do individuals, and
government agencies may find it more convenient to respond if local claims
are channeled through voluntary organizations, especially those that have support
of the local government. 206
"Decentralizing integrated rural development activities," J.D.
Montgomery, pp. 231-269
- ...integrated rural
development activities nearly always involve the decentralization of at
least some decision-making functions. 232
- The more integrated
projects are supported by the center and the more linked they are into the
national plan, the greater the probability they will get increased
domestic financial support when their special funding sources are ended.
256
"Decentralization and development," GSC and DR, pp. 295-315
- Ultimately,
decentralization can be effective only when agencies and actors at the
regional ad local levels have developed the capacities to perform
effectively the planning, decision-making, and management functions that
are formally granted to them. ...their effectiveness as participants in a
decentralized system depends on the ability of local organizations to (1)
identify development problems and opportunities; (2) identify or create
possible solutions to development problems; (3) make decisions and resolve
conflicts; (4) mobilize resources; and (5) manage development programs and
projects. 299
- ...an incremental
implementation strategy clearly articulated and continuously implemented
in stages over a long period of time would both be politically feasible
and lead to meaningful results. 309
Valk, P., and Wekwete, K. (eds.) (1990) Decentralizing for Participatory
Planning, Vermont: Gower Publishing.
"State, decentralization and participation," P. De Valk, pp. 3-14
- ...it has been suggested
that the unity of participation as both means and end is implicit in a
number of national development efforts. 7
"Centralization and development planning: a comparative perspective,"
D. Conyers, pp. 15-34
- ...one cannot meaningfully
consider the decentralization of planning without the decentralization of
implementation. 15
- ...decentralization can
help to generate additional resources of finance and manpower and make
efficient use of existing resources. The main reason for this is that
decentralization increases the sense of responsibility of those people at
the subnational level to whom powers are decentralized and therefore their
involvement in, and commitment to, the development activities for which
they are responsible. 18
"The impact of decentralization on spatial equity and rural development
in Tanzania," P.S. Maro, pp. 137-175
- Decentralization has
increased spatial links and intensity of interaction. 144
- By facilitating a more
equitable distribution of material, human and technical resources in rural
areas, decentralization has started to reduce spatial inequalities. 144
"Who sets the rules for decentralization? Who wants to play the game?
P. De Valk, 255-268
- With the council also
involved in the implementation of projects and of various by-laws, the
representative body can easily be turned into an extension of functional
institutions, implying a reversal of its representative direction in this
respect. 257
Ekins, P., and Max-Need, M. (eds.) (1992) Real-Life Economics:
Understanding Wealth Creation, London: Routledge.
"Abstraction, tendencies and stylized facts," Tony Lawson, pp.
21-38
- The first observation is
that most of the constant conjunctions of events that constitute important
results in science, in fact, only occur in experimental situations.
That is closed systems - those in which constant conjunction of
events hold - do not, in general (outside astronomy, at least) occur
spontaneously. The second observation is that laws supported in
experimental activity are frequently successfully applied outside
experimental situations. 23
"The I & We Paradigm," Amitai Etzioni, pp. 48-53
- Empirical work on the role
of community has shown unequivocally that social collectivities are major
decision-making units, often providing the context within which individual
decisions are made. Moreover, in many areas collectivities, if properly
structured, can both render more rational decisions than their individual
members (though not necessarily highly rational ones) and account for more
of the variance in individual decision-making than do individual
attributes. 51
"Economics, equity and sustainable development," David Pearce, pp.
69-76
- At its simplest
sustainability means making things last, making them permanent and
durable. 69
- The three goals that are
...served by sustainable development are equity (within and between
generations, and to nature, survival (durability as resilience) and welfare
improvement (raising average standards of welfare).72
"Coevolution of economy, society, and environment," Richard
Norgaard, pp. 76-88
- The policy challenge of
sustainable development consists of finding a path towards a positive
social and ecological coevolution. 81
- The coevolutionary view
emphasizes how knowledge, social organization, and technology and even the
environment have long coevolved with human values. 84
- Sustainable development
will entail a return to the coevolutionary development process with the
diversity that remains and the deliberate fostering of further diversity
to permit adaptation to future surprises. 86
"The modern economy as a service economy: the production of utilization
value," O. Giarini, pp. 136-155
- Rationality is therefore
not so much a problem of avoiding risk as eliminating uncertainty to
acceptable levels in given situations. 143
"People's self development," Anisur Rahman, pp. 167-180
- ...it is the constructive
engagement rather than the economic achievement per se, which is
the more universal aspect of popular initiatives - the fact that people
are mobilized, engaged in tasks set by themselves and going about
them together, pooling resources and energy whereby they can do better
than walking alone, drawing strength and sharing power from a sustained
life and effort. Sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail (in their
own terms); but I all this they move forward in the evolution of their
lives. It is such a positive evolution that is possible, and this is important
in its own right, both for the involved people themselves as well as for
the future generation to whom they can pass on the heritage of
constructive social engagement to move through life with all its odds,
showing their creativity and a spirit of tackling challenges, developing
thereby as a human personality. 171
- Micro-level initiatives to
promote people's self-development are showing that this need not await a
redistribution of resources even for physical resource-poor communities
who can start developing today at least in human personality, social
values and social organizations. 178
- ...it is not very
convincing to suggest that generations should keep on waiting for the
elusive 'revolution' before mobilizing themselves to move forward with
what they have and what they can acquire through local struggles. There
is, furthermore, another profound need for working to promote micro level
people's self-development right now, to enhance the very possibility that
a macro-level social change, if it does occur someday, may truly release
and promote the people's creativity. I suggest that a political
leadership which is not involved in people's self development now, will
not be able to promote this after coming into power, because its will not
know what this means, nor how this can be animated. 178
- Development is creative
activity to the extent that such activity realizes creative potential. 179
"The economics of the satisfaction of needs," Mario Kamenetsky,
pp. 181-196
- A revolution can be the
work of overpowering leaders and submissive, fearful followers; an
evolutionary process requires instead the full and free participation of
all social groups and the work of facilitators that help people expand
their perception of the ever-unfolding reality. 193
- [Thomas Jefferson in 1776]
"laws and institutions must go hand in hand with progress of the
human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, new
discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions
change with the change of circumstances, institutions must also advance,
and keep pace with the times. Peterson, M.D. (ed.) 1987, p.553, The
Portable Thomas Jefferson, Viking press, NY.
- Any political decision to
make possible all of the enjoyment of libidinal wealth consuming
activities by increasing the production of wealth and equitably
distributing the income it will generate must involve two other decisions:
first, the decision to create a social environment in which all may freely
engage in libidinal gratuitous activities; and second, the decision to
protect the physical environment that supports all human activities. 193
"Development and human needs," Manfred Max-Neef, pp. 197-214
- It would be a delusion to
base a strategy for future development on the expansion of exports of
primary products. Very simply, indicators suggest that the bulk of primary
products will be affected, for different reasons, by unfavorable terms of
trade. Moreover, others are already being replaced by more efficient
substitutes. Another strategy based on the diversification of exports,
that is, of manufactured goods, would inevitably come up against the
protectionist policies of the powers in the North. Also, to assume a type
of development which is nurtured by external contributions of capital is
rules out altogether on account of the serious and insoluble condition of
indebtedness in which we are forced to live. 197
- ...development must nurture
local spaces, facilitate micro-organizations an support the multiplicity
of cultural matrixes comprising civil society. This type of development
must rediscover, consolidate and integrate the diverse collective
identities that make up the social body.198
- Processes which nurture
diversity and increase social participation and control over the
environment are decisive in the articulation of projects to expand
national autonomy and distribute the fruits of economic development more
equitably. 198
- ...it is an educational,
creative and participatory exercise that brings about a state of deep
critical awareness; that is to say, the method is, in itself, a generator
of synergic effects. 211
- It local spaces it can be a
broad based participation process where those representing the interests
of the economic, political and social domains of the community may express
their ideas. 211
- "The essential measure
of the success of the economy is not production and consumption at all,
but the nature, extent, quality, and complexity of the total capital
stock, including in this the state of human bodies and minds included in
the system", Boulding, KE, 1966, p.9, 'The economics of the coming
spaceship earth, in H. Jarret (ed.) Environmental quality in a growing
economy, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore MD, 3-14.
"Popular planning in practice," M. Mackintosh, and H. Wainwright,
pp. 358-369
- ...where the experiment was
based on popular initiative and control there was far more change than
elsewhere. 358
- The most important lesson
is that the learning process, if it is to be effective, has to be a
genuine exchange, offering as well as listening, and returning to people
the results of discussions. 360
- ...strengthening the
capacity for self organization ...was also an essential basis for
effective intervention in the...economy.361
"A new direction for community development in US," Severyn Bruyn,
pp. 370-383
- Knowledge has become an
important part of the market in our contemporary economy. 378
- A greater degree of economic
diversity and self-reliance can be introduced by ... creating ecological
loops in which the waste of one production system is transformed locally
into productive use by another system. 380
"People's participation: reconciling growth with equity," P.
Wignaraja, pp. 392-401
- To participate people need
to raise their level of consciousness and to form their own organizations.
The poor need to become increasingly aware of the socio-economic reality
around them, of the forces that keep them in poverty, and of the
possibilities for bringing about change in their conditions through their
own reflections and collective actions. This constitutes a process of
self-transformation through people's praxis where they grow and mature as
human beings. 392
- A truly participatory
development process cannot always be generated spontaneously, given the
existing power relations at all levels, apathy, and the deep rooted
dependency relationship between rich and poor, common in most countries of
the South. It often requires a catalyst, a new type of activist and
initiator who will work with the poor, who identifies with the interests
of the poor and who have faith in the people. The interaction with
initiators help people to analyze their problems, to understand their
problems better and to articulate their felt needs. Their interaction sets
in motion a process of reflection, mobilization, organization, action and
further reflection among the poor. Through a process of awareness
creation, initiators mobilize people into self-reliant action and assist
in the building-up of collective strength and bargaining among the poor.
392-3
- Hence, identification,
selection and sensitization of such initiators becomes a central task in
launching an effective participatory rural development movement.
Conventional training methodology (delivering a pre-packaged basket of
knowledge or skills through lectures and instruction) cannot be used for
this purpose. It is a process of sensitization rather than one of formal
training. It is a process of self-learning through exposure to the
dynamics of actual socio-economic situations rather than learning in the
abstract. Observation, investigation, group interaction, sharing and
comparing experiences, criticism and self-criticism, cultivating
behavioral and social skills (particularly the capacity to analyze the political
economy of poverty) of the central elements of this process of
sensitization. Without this awareness people cannot participate. 393
- It is difficult for the poor
to break away from the vicious circle of dependence and poverty
individually. It is only through group effort and organization that they
can reduce dependence and initiate a course of participatory, self-reliant
development. Thus participation implies mobilization, conscientization and
organization (for group or collective action) - in that order. 393
- Self initiatives are
educational experiences which expand people's horizons. 396
- The success of one action
creates the possibility of undertaking another, setting in motion a flow
of successive actions. Furthermore, the process tends to multiply from one
group to another and from one village to another. Successful actions of
one group create a demonstration effect on others in a village on the
possibilities of self-development. ...after a point, people's groups tend
to develop an urge to expand the process among others, for they begin to
realize that it is only when several groups join hands and begin to act
together that they will have the strength and the bargaining power to
tackle larger issues of common concern to them. 396
- ...its evolution must be
seen as a self generating process where each stage is built on the
collective experience of the previous stage. 399
IFAD (1986) Monitoring and Evaluation: Guiding Principles for the Design
and Use in Rural Development Projects and programs in Developing Countries,
Rome: IFAD.
- ...track the progress of
development activities during implementation and remain alert, in case of
shortfalls or deviations, for early corrective action. 8
- ...determine systematically
and objectively the relevance, efficiency, and effectiveness of
development activities and their impact on the intended beneficiaries. 8
- ...learn lessons for future
development planning, i.e., for better formulation and implementation of
projects and programs. 9
- Monitoring is the
continuous or periodic review and surveillance (overseeing) by management
at every level of the hierarchy of the implementation of an activity to
ensure that input deliveries, work schedules, targeted outputs and other
required actions are proceeding according to plan. 13
- The purpose of monitoring
is to achieve efficient and effective project performance by providing
feedback to project management at all levels. This enables management to
improve operational plans and to take timely corrective action in case of
shortfalls and constraints. 14
- Evaluation is a process for
determining systematically and objectively the relevance, efficiency,
effectiveness and impact of activities in the light of their objectives.
It is an organizational process for improving activities still in progress
and for aiding management in future planning, programming and
decision-making. 14
- Ongoing evaluation is the
analysis, during the implementation phase of an activity, of its
continuing relevance, efficiency and effectiveness and present and likely future
outputs, effects and impact. It can assist decision makers by providing
information about any needed adjustment of objectives, policies,
implementation strategies, or other elements of the project, as well as
providing information for future planning. 14
- Terminal evaluation is
taken from 6-12 months after project completion, either as a substitute
for ex post evaluation of projects with short gestation periods (e.g.,
rural credit or agricultural extension) or before initiating a follow-up
phase of the project. 15
- Ex post evaluation is
undertaken at full project development, i.e., some years after project
completion when full project benefits and impact are expected to have been
realized. 15
- The purpose of terminal and
ex post evaluations is two fold: 1) to assess the achievement of overall
results of the project in terms of efficiency, outputs, effects and
impact; and 2) to learn lessons for future planning, i.e., the design or
formulation, appraisal, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation of development
activities. 15
- Monitoring and ongoing
evaluation are basically analytical processes which collate and analyze
relevant data and information for purposes of effective management. Hence,
they need to be undertaken by those who are responsible for the
implementation of a project and program and for its components. 19
- Monitoring and evaluation
involves the collection and analysis of information. 30
- Monitoring and evaluation
unit's main function should be to: (a) identify appropriate indicators and
information and data needs; (b) arrange for regular feedback of this data
from appropriate sources; and (c ) analyze the data for drawing inferences
about the status of implementation, particularly constraints and
shortfalls, for timely corrective action. 33
Mohan, G., and Stokke, K. (2000) "Participatory Development and
Empowerment: The Dangers of Localism," Third World Quarterly, Vol.
21, No. 2, pp. 247-268.
- In terms of valorizing the
local over the general, two main strands of development thinking and intervention
can be identified. These can be described as 'revisionist neo-liberalism'
and post-Marxism'. 248
- Civil society institutions
can also be vehicles for participation in development program and
empowerment of target groups of poor people. This move has in part
challenged the centralization of the top-down state through planning
couched in terms of 'stakeholders' and 'local governance'. 24
- This emphasis within
neoliberalism on community participation and empowerment is paralleled by
trends within more radical development studies. For post-Marxists,
empowerment is a matter of collective mobilization of marginalized groups
against the disempowering activities of both the state and the market. 248
- Laclau and Mouffe question
the centrality of class as the locus of political consciousness and argue
that 'society' cannot be so easily or statically explained. The focus then
shifts to local political actors and a celebration of their difference and
diversity rather than their common relationship to the means of production.
This fluidity of identities produce a multitude of collective actions.
Thus social movements become the primary focus for serious analytical
engagements with political agency in society. 248
- The revised neo-liberal
position represents a 'top-down' strategy for institutional reform in the
sense that it is an effort by state agencies and collaborating
non-governmental organizations to make institutions more efficient and to
include identified target groups in the development process. This conceptualization
of participation and empowerment is based on a harmony model of power.
Power resides with individual members of a community and can increase with
the successful pursuit of individual and collective goals. This implies
that the empowerment of the powerless could be achieved within the
existing social order without any significant negative effects upon the
power of the powerful. Post-Marxism represents a reversion of this
neo-liberal view. The radical notion of empowerment focuses on 'bottom-up'
social mobilization in society as a challenge to hegemonic interests
within the state and the market. Conscientization and collective identity
formation around common experiences with economic and political
marginalization are key elements in this process. Power is conceptualized
in relational and conceptual terms. Hence, empowerment of marginalized
groups requires a structural transformation of economic and political
relations towards a radically democratized society. What revised
neo-liberalism and post-Marxism share is a belief that states or markets
cannot and should not be solely responsible for ensuring social equality
and welfare growth. 249
- ...the liberal populism of
Chambers (1983) centers upon reversing the previous centralism such that
all development agencies should promote grassroots development. More
radical versions are rooted in attacks upon Westernization and capitalism.
In both cases the 'post-development' era is to be founded upon localized,
non-capitalist practices. 249
- Although we see this move
towards the local as a promising tendency within contemporary development
theory and practice, we would like to point out that it also contains a
number of dangers. One obvious problem is the tendency to essentialize and
romaticize 'the local'. This means that local social inequalities and
power relations are downplayed. Another problem is the tendency to view
'the local' in isolation from broader economic and political structures.
This means that the contextuality of place, eg national and transnational
economic and political forces, is underplayed. 249
- ...studies in local
development should pay more attention to the politics of the local, ie to
the hegemonic production and representation of 'the local' and the use of
'the local' in counter hegemonic collective mobilization. 249
- [D Slater, 1989] "The
term 'decentralization' can be articulated into a monetarist discourse,
but alternatively it can be linked into a discourse that combines ideas of
collective empowerment, democracy and socialism." 250
- Decentralization
constitutes a fluid and flexible discourse that can be utilized by
different ideological interests. 250
- ...the major lenders have
promoted decentralization as a means of breaking the power of central
ministries, increasing revenue generation and shifting the burden of
service delivery onto local stakeholders. This is a very different
inflection compared with liberal and radical approaches that see
devolution of power to local government as a means of promoting a new
communitarian spirit and forming the seedbed of democratic practice.
Underpinning the lenders' vision of decentralization is rational choice
theory, which permits the more political readings of decentralization to
be transformed into a narrative of capital and 'efficiency'. 250
- The process [of
decentralization] can take four organizational forms--deconcentration of
administration, delegation to semi-autonomous or parastatal organizations,
devolution, and transfer of functions from government to non-government
institutions. 251
- Crucially the
organizational arrangements for decentralization include, in order,
privatization, deregulation, delegation, devolution and deconcentration.
251
- Decentralization in its
liberal guise treats the local as a functional, economic space with
policies designed to increase the efficiency of service delivery. 251
- Decentralization simply
facilitates the efficiency of these nested local economies. 251
- A more liberal and populist
approach to local empowerment centers on such an open-ended interpretation
of participation, which its leading advocate [Robert Chamber, 1994]
describes as a 'paradigm shift'. 252
- They share a belief in
relying less on 'outside' agents, whether that be the state or Western
development agencies, for achieving changes to self and/or community. 252
- ...the starting point is to
reject the assumption that 'experts' know best what creates the space for
local knowledge to be accessed. 252
- This approach is seen as
being universally applicable since it permits, in theory at least,
development to be locally determined and free from the normative biases of
'non-locals'. 252
- Whichever point of the
participatory spectrum one takes, the common ground is that codifying
local knowledge is a necessary first step towards beneficial social
change. 252
- The principles of PRA
revolve around a reversal of learning, learning rapidly and progressively,
offsetting biases, optimizing trade-offs, triangulating and seeking
diversity. 252
- In terms of its political
imagination participatory development tends to treat 'the local' as a
harmonious community which is reflected in the way in which PRA tends to
promote a consensual view. 253
- The danger from a policy
point of view is that the actions based on consensus may actually empower
the powerful vested interests that manipulated the research in the first
place. 253
- Practitioners of
participatory research and development assume that local knowledge will
reverse the previously damaging interventions which treated locals as
passive recipients. 253
- ...the insider/outsider
division is the most important problem blocking development. 253
- Another effect of 'going
local' is that the state is downgraded in importance. The liberal
assumption of much participatory research is that the state has been too
centralized, but better localized research will make bureaucrats more
aware and in touch with locals so that more appropriate development is
achieved. 254
- Instead of romanticizing
the role of local civil society in development theory and practice, we
need to examine the political use of 'the local' by various actors. 254
- NGOs "have come to the
sad realization that although they have achieved many micro-level
successes, the systems and structures that determine power and resource
allocations--locally, nationally, and globally--remain largely
intact". 254
- NGOs should 'also seek to
build up the capacity of the state as an integral part of this localized,
grassroots work', rather than creating parallel or alternative welfare
delivery systems outside the state. 254
- Despite social capital
being under-theorized and poorly understood, it has become an important
analytical concept and policy tool within development. First, from an
analytical perspective several researchers have tested whether social
capital does underpin successful economic development and/or poverty
alleviation programs. Leaving aside the obvious point that social capital
also has a 'downside', in the sense that associations can work against the
assumed common interests of society, these studies generally identify a
positive correlation between social capital and local development. 256
- 'The creation and
strengthening of social capital in the form of local organization and
networks is an essential task in building intersectoral cooperation that
mobilizes and utilizes local resources and energies for problem solving'.
256
- ...'the nature of
relationships among plural actors, and the consolidation of social capital
in the form of local organizations and networks, constitute part of the
explanation of these successes in sustainable forestry'. Crucially, these
analysts see social capital as an essentially local endowment leading to
local development. 256
- If one accepts that social
capital is vital to development success and that lack of success points to
the absence of social capital, then policies should attempt to 'build it'
and 'thicken' civil society. 256
- Wilson urges planners to be
facilitory and reflexive, in much the same way as the PRA-based
approaches… 256
- Crucially, social capital
contributes to economic prosperity and sustainability and should ideally
entail horizontal and vertical associations that both promote social
cohesion and prevent divisive parochialism. The concept also applies to
the wider political and social environment in which communities exist,
such that…social capital can encourage democracy and visa versa. The
realize the potential of social capital in development, the World Bank
aims to foster broad based participation and partnerships between the
private sector, the state and civil society. 256
- Social capital is a
wide-ranging concept which is being used to explain a diverse range of
developmental processes and/or justify policies based around it. Most
analyst see it is a local phenomena since it involves trust, reciprocity
and a civic minded community spirit. However, it has recently been
dislocated from local communities to explain such things as the actions of
corrupt state actors, or the failure of privatization schemes. 257
- Those regions which are
successful are those which have possessed high stocks of social capital
for a long time. 257
- In this way regions are
locked into a 'path dependency' whereby their initial stocks of social
capital, wherever they may come from, inculcate a self-fulfilling cycle of
prosperity. The corollary is that unsuccessful regions simply lacked and
lack the proper social capital to develop. While the concept of social
capital promises to provide a more nuanced understanding of local
development, it actually reduces causality to a rigid determinism. 257
- Whether tacit or overt, the
thrust of social capital theory is to strengthen economic growth. In this
sense it reflects the colonization of the social sciences by neoclassical
economics as it attempts to give an economic rationale to all 'non
economic' behavior. 258
- The academic attack on
Marxism was based on its class reductionism and economic determinism,
which produced over-generalizations and seemingly unworkable practical
politics. 258
- The new anti-development
grassroots movements that emerged in the 1980s, and the analysts that are
presenting them within academic literature, are not searching for new development
alternatives but rather for alternatives to development.
Escobar identifies the defense of the local, ie the defense of cultural
difference and livelihoods, as the main principle behind these new forms
of collective struggles. 259
- ...social movements develop
as forms of resistance against the state and the market. 259
- ...much of the literature
on social movements has tended to se civil society and the state as
separate and opposed spheres. 260
- The state is perceived as a
site of subordination--as part and parcel of the oppressive system of
capitalist exploitation and bureaucratic domination that social movements
resist. Political integration will inevitably undermine social movements
and give oppressive regimes a degree of political legitimacy. Thus it is
argued that social movements are and must remain autonomous in regard to
the institutionalized political system. This helps to explain the assumption
that the new social movements are anti-state. While this may be true in
many cases, some social movements are anything but progressive in this
regard and seek accommodation within the state apparatus rather than
creating new political spaces outside it. 260
- Political participation can
and does take place in a number of ways with quite different outcomes for
the movements in question: "The first outcome is the partial or total
fulfillment of the demands of the movement by some agency of the state. …
The second possibility is the incorporation of an urban and rural movement
into the personal following of a populist figure… A third outcome is the
incorporation or a geographically or thematically isolated movement that
is highly specific in its demands into a broader-based political struggle
led by a party or coalition of parties." What can be learned from
recent analyses of social movements is that most cases are characterized
by a growing complexity of alliances and conflicts between collective actors
in civil society and actors within the state. The institutionalized
political system constitutes a set of negative or positive political
opportunity structures that can facilitate or hamper collective action
rather than simply being a monolithic 'other' for collective actors. 260
- Civil society is implicitly
defined as a space of freedom from the state. 261
- The non-state arena may be
in one sense a space of political freedom but not of economic freedom. 261
- Some bases for identity,
such as sexual orientation, are not inherently exploitive (though they may
have become so) and could exist in any political-economic system, whereas
class is irreducibly linked to capitalist exploitation. 261
- ...'diverse classes will
need to be theorized differently and complexly and not only as
differential positions vis-à-vis capitalist production'. In this way the
political imaginary can accommodate both material struggles and identity
under an increasingly globalizing capitalism, but be sensitive to
differential causality attached to an identity position. 261
- As globalization is
multiple so too must be these resistances. 261
- 'Undeclared forms of
resistance conducted individually and collectively in submerged networks
parallel openly declared forms of resistance embodied in wars of movement
and position, and counter-movements'. 262
- The key then is to use
resistance as a springboard into imagining and creating alternative
futures. 262
- One line has been to
emphasize resistance from 'below', which has seen a retreat into the
localisms identified earlier and underpinned by a philosophy of
anti-development. Pieterse criticizes these strategies for simply seeking
'enclaves that provide shelter from the storm' which then precludes the
possibility of linking them together in a concerted global strategy. 262
- ...local resistance by
itself cannot challenge global and, in this case, national forces. There
is therefore a need to 'break out of the local--primary or exclusive
emphasis on the local can also lead groups to become colloquial and
blinkered to other acts of resistance around the world or even their own
regions, leaving them exposed to defeat or even destruction by not
building sufficient social alliances'. Resistance must be 'localized
regionalized and globalized at the same time'. The linkages between scale
and politics have become more complex, but more crucial, in these global
times. As the driving forces behind local collective actions are becoming
global and globalization is causing a transformation and hollowing out of
the state, 'scaling up' of multiple localisms in beginning to take place,
albeit tentatively. 262
- So in the same way that
economic globalization works outside and across states, this form of
politics works underneath and beyond states. McGrew calls it 'radical
communitarianism' because it 'stresses the creation of alternative forms
of global social, economic and political organization based generally upon
the communitarian principles: that is principles which emerge from the
life and conditions of particular communities, from local communities to
communities of interest or affection'. 262-3
- It [local participation]
can underplay the role of the state and transnational power holders and
can, overtly and inadvertently, cement Eurocentric solutions to Third
World development. 262-4
- ...the new localism in
development studies has tended to essentialize the local as discrete
places that host relatively homogenous communities or, alternatively,
constitute sites of grassroots mobilization and resistance. 264
- Among geographers it has
become common sense that places are constitutes by economic, social,
cultural and political relations and flows of commodities, information and
people that extend far beyond a given locality. 262
- These observations do not
imply an outright rejection of the local as a basis for empowerment. The
point is rather that this political project will have to overcome binary
opposite such as local/global and state/civil society in order to be
relevant. 264
Rahman, M.A. (1995) "Participatory Development: Toward Liberation or
Co-optation," In Community Empowerment: A Reader in Participation and
Development, Gary Craig and Majorie Mayo (eds.), London: Zed Books.
- Some community
organizations have been formed spontaneously, in the sense of having been
created by the people themselves, but the greater number of organizations
have been stimulated and assisted by external interventions. 24
- Such activities involve
various forms and degrees of mutual cooperation among people who
participate, in order to promote their economic position faster than would
be possible on an individual basis. 24
- ...participatory (action)
research has spread, which seeks to stimulate and assist disadvantaged
people to undertake their own collective investigations into their living
conditions and environment. From this, they can develop their own
systematic thinking--their own 'science'--from which they can derive
strength to negotiate with other quarters of society. 24-5
- The theoretical and
philosophical conceptions behind such popular mobilizations also have a
varied nature. In the early stages, such movements were outside the
paradigm of both conventional development theory and revolutionary
theories of social change. But some theoretical conceptions of such work
had a 'radical stance, in the sense of advocating a major shift in the
power balance between the 'elites' and the 'people' towards the people,
presenting a vision of peoples 'liberation'. 25
- Early proponents of
participatory research drew some inspiration also from the Marxist vision
of self-emancipation of the oppressed classes. Many practitioners as well
as theoreticians involved with such grassroots work also articulated a
view of development which is seen as a release of people's creativity.
This was opposed to the conventional notion of development which saw
economic growth as a measure of progress in the economy's ability to
satisfy the consumption needs of the society, or as progress toward
satisfaction of such needs, in particular the basic (consumption) needs of
underprivileged people. Such radical theoretical or philosophical
conceptions of popular grassroots mobilizations have, however, lacked a
political theory for macro-level social transformation, without which the
micro-level assertion of popular power and release of people's creativity
remain heavily circumscribed. Meanwhile, the failure of conventional
development efforts led by state agencies to combat mass poverty has led
civil development agencies (CDAs, popularly called 'NGOs', but a positive
term may be preferred) to launch programs funded mostly by foreign donors
to promote people's collective initiatives to improve their economic and
social status. 25
- Today this particular
variety of grassroots work, rather than work of a 'radical' (liberation)
character, looks like becoming the dominant trend. 26
- Participatory development
is far from being adopted in practice anywhere in a way which leads to
major structural reforms and the transfer of resources away from those
vested interests that control dominant social and political structures
towards underprivileged people. Dominant lobbies in southern countries are
accepting PD as at best a poverty alleviation strategy, to be implemented
sporadically at the micro-level, and then by only mobilizing the resources
of poverty groups themselves, supplemented by donor support, rather than
redirecting the mainstream of development resources to promote PD on a
national scale. 26
- Most countries are
following the 'structural adjustment program' (SAP) approaches of the
World Bank as a condition for the Bank's assistance. SAP is not concerned
with PD, nor for that matter with poverty alleviation, except as a
hypothetical long-run 'trickle-down' effect of economic growth. The SAP
approach does not regard agrarian reform as necessary in most countries
even for industrial development of the conventional variety, not to speak
of the need to give the control of agrarian assets to direct producers as
secure bases from which they could take participatory initiatives. Nor
does it address the question of 'urban bias', which contributes to the
premature growth of high consumption cultures, and locates people in
contexts where life is more atomized, inhibiting the development of
communal solidarity and mutual share and care as the cultural basis of PD.
The presumption of efficient resource allocation under SAP rests solely on
the supposed virtue of the 'free market', which both in theory and in
practice naturally favors the conspicuous consumption urges of the affluent
of the society in question rather than the basic needs of the
underprivileged. 27
- Even at the local level
where PD initiatives are growing, there are few instances of PD work
involving the bulk of low-income groups in any single locality (for
example, village).
- ...poverty in most
countries is a macro-phenomenon and needs to be tackled with a
macro-development strategy. 28
- ...a society has to find a
strategy of economic growth which has poverty alleviation built into it,
rather than pursue a growth strategy which augments poverty and then look
for special poverty alleviation programs as a palliative or 'safety net'.
28
- One might still wish that a
'radical' spirit be kept alive in grassroots work as far as possible;
radical not necessarily in the sense of any particular ideology but in the
sense of supporting values of social activism. 29
- ...those called 'poor' tend
to develop a low self image by internalizing this social identity, and so
develop a mentality of dependence on others. Notwithstanding their poverty,
these people are in fact sustaining the life of the broader society by
their hard work and creativity, and it is very important that they take
this positive self-image. This is one important step towards mobilizing
themselves for self-development and creative beings (producers). 30
- Grassroots work cannot
spread fast enough without external resources and an ever-expanding supply
of field workers. But, if the resource base of CDA's rests primarily on
foreign donor funding, then national self-determination also becomes
compromised. Such dependence of popular initiatives on continuous CDA
support also invites various kinds of distortions in CDA work, giving them
power over the people that can be abused. The principle of people's
self-reliance is, in fact, professed by most CDA's; but in reality, there
is much to improve in this regard. 30
- Currently most CDAs are
accountable only to their foreign donors, without any accountability to
structures within the society (except for the formal registrational
purposes to national government, which are, in any case, ill equipped to
assess grassroots work belonging to an 'alternative paradigm'). This may
not be such a serious matter for small-scale work. But large-scale
grassroots mobilization of people by agencies who are accountable mainly
to foreign donors (and following mandates given by donor funding), raises
questions of social, cultural and political sensitivity. 31
- If CDAs could transcend
their respective 'empire' mentalities to work toward the development of
such independent popular and large-scale structures, challenging national
as well as CDA policies with the combined strength of their constituent
organizations, then grassroots work by CDAs would be contributing more
significantly to the promotion of people's empowerment, self-reliance and
a deeper participatory development. The theoretical case for participatory
development is strengthening, due to the failure of conventional
development strategies; and the PD movement is growing quantitatively as
well as receiving increasing endorsement from the development cooperation
system and in development thinking. 32
- ...small scale PD efforts
seem to be serving the purpose mainly of providing a 'safety net' and do
not promise fundamental movement toward people's liberation. Perhaps the
liberation spirit may be kept alive, for now, only by deepening the
quality of PD work and consciously reflecting the values of social
activism, building towards a more genuinely participatory approach to
transformation. 32
Chambers, R. (1994) "The Origins and Practice of Participatory Rural
Appraisal," World Development, Vo. 22, No. 7, pp. 953-969.
- The past decade has
witnessed more shifts in the rhetoric of rural development than in its
practice. These shifts include the now familiar reversals from top-down to
bottom-up, from centralized standardization to local diversity, and from
blueprint to learning process. 953
- The move here is away from
extractive survey questionnaires and toward new approaches and methods for
participatory appraisal and analysis in which more of the activities
previously appropriated by outsiders and instead carried out by local
rural or urban people themselves. 953
- PRA has been called
"an approach and methods for learning about rural life and conditions
from, with and by rural people." 953
- The phenomenon described
is…more than just learning. It is a process which extends into analysis,
planning and action. 953
- a recent description of PRA
is "a family of approaches and methods to enable rural people to
share, enhance, and analyze their knowledge of life and conditions, to
plan and to act. 953
- Some of its [PRA] methods
do appear to be new; but some have been rediscoveries. 953
- Five streams which stand
out as sources and parallels to PRA are, in alphabetical order: 1) activist
participatory research, 2) agroecosystem analysis, 3) applied
anthropology, 4) field research on farming systems and 5) rapid rural
appraisal. 954
- Activist participatory
research…owes much to the work and inspiration of Paulo Freire, to his
book Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968). 954
- ...participatory action
research (PAR) has been parallel and overlapping with participatory
research, and has had strong association with industry and agriculture.
The techniques used in PAR include collective research through meetings
and sociodramas, critical recovery of history, valuing and applying
"folk culture," and the production and diffusion of new
knowledges through written, oral and visual forms. 954
- Activist participatory
research has taken different forms and has been practiced by people with a
range of ideological positions, from crypto-paternalism to open-ended
facilitation. Its special focus on the underprivileged and on political
action has threatened established interests, whether political or professional,
and limited its spread. In practice, much PRA has similarly been concerned
with poverty and equity. The contributions of the activist participatory
research stream to PRA have been more through concepts than methods. They
have in common three prescriptive ideas: 1) that poor people are creative
and capable, and can and should do much of their own investigation,
analysis and planning; 2) that outsiders have roles as convenors,
catalysts and facilitators; 3) that the weak and marginalized can and
should be empowered. 954
- Drawing on systems and
ecological thinking, it [agroecosystem analysis] combines analysis of
systems and system properties (productivity, stability, sustainability,
and equitability) with pattern analysis of space (maps and transects), time
(seasonal calendars and long-term trends), flows and relationships (flow,
causal, Venn and other diagrams), relative values (bar diagrams of
relative sources of income etc.), and decisions (decision trees and other
decision diagrams). 954
- Agroecosystem analysis was
so powerful and practical that it quickly overlapped with and contributed
to much RRA. 954
- Some of the major
contributions agroecosystem analysis to current RRA and PRA have been: 1)
transects (systematic walks and observations); 2) informal mapping (sketch
maps drawn on site); 3) diagramming (seasonal calendars, flow and causal
diagrams, bar charts, Venn and chapati diagrams); innovation
assessment (scoring and ranking different actions. 955
- In one methodological
stream, the approaches of social anthropology were adopted in health and
nutrition in rapid assessment procedures (RAP), which variously used
conversations, observations, informal interviews, focus groups, and
careful and detailed recording. PRA represents an extension and
application of social anthropological insights, approaches and methods,
crossfertilized with others. Some of the many insights and contributions
coming from and shared with social anthropology have been: 1) the idea of
field learning as flexible art rather than rigid science; 2) the value of
field residence, unhurried participant-observation, and conversations; 3)
the importance of attitudes, behavior and rapport; 4) the emic-etic
distinction; 5) the validity of indigenous technical knowledge. 955
- In the later 1980s and
early 1990s it has been increasingly recognized that farmers should and
could play a much greater part in agricultural research. So field research
on farming systems can be seen to have contributed especially to the
appreciation and understanding of: 1) the complexity, diversity and risk
proneness of many farming systems; 2) the knowledge, professionalism and
rationality of small and poor farmers; 3) their experimental mindset and
behavior, 4) their ability to conduct their own analyses. 955
- The second origin of RRA
was disillusions with the normal processes of questionnaire surveys and
their results. Again and again, over many years and in many places the
experience has been that large-scale surveys with long questionnaires
tended to be drawn out, tedious, a headache to administer, a nightmare to
process and write up, inaccurate and unreliable in data obtained, leading
to reports, if any, which were long, late, boring, misleading, difficult
to use, and anyway ignored. 956
- In the late 1970s, most of
those professionals who were inventing and using methods which were
quicker and more cost-effective than "respectable" questionnaire
surveys, were reluctant to write about what they did, fearing for their
professional credibility. They felt compelled to conform to standard
statistical norms, however costly and crude their applications, and
obliged in their reports and publications to use conventional methods,
categories and measures. In a classic statement, Michael Collinson (1981,
p.444) described how he would take only a week to conduct an explanatory
survey to identify agricultural research priorities, but would then feel
obliged to follow with this a formal verification survey which represented
the major commitment of professional time and funds. The more costly
exercise had always conformed the explanatory survey but "the numbers
which this formal survey provide are the only hard evidence produced by
the diagnostic process. This is extremely important in convincing 'the
Establishment'…" To convince, the researcher had to be conservative;
but the process was costly and decisions and action were delayed. In the
1980s, in some places, this situation was transformed. The family of
approaches and methods known as Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA) gained increasing
acceptance. 956
- In specialized fields…there
were parallel and overlapping developments. In health and nutrition, for
example, Rapid Assessment Procedures (RAP) were practiced in at least 20
countries. In agriculture, some practitioners of farming systems research
and extension innovated with lighter, quicker methods in a RRA style. In
irrigation,, a small literature built up on RRA. 957
- In different ways, both the
Kenya and Indian experiences were seminal for understanding and for the
development of PRA. 957
- PRA often implies radical
personal and institutional change, and it would debase the term to use it
for anything less than this. The claim that "PRA is a simple
methodology…" is then misleading, since personal and institutional
change are rarely simple or easy. Moreover, as PRA becomes increasingly
fashionable, some may be tempted to label and relabel their work as PRA
when it is still extractive rather than participatory, and when their
behavior and attitudes are still dominant, top-down and unchanged. 959
- With PRA,
"participatory" has similarly been challenged, since
"participation" can be used to mean people's participation in
outsiders' projects, when much PRA has evolved to establish ownership of
plans, actions and projects more with rural (or urban) people themselves.
In addition, the processes which begin as appraisal now usually include
analysis, and often lead on to planning, action, and participatory
monitoring and evaluation, carrying the PRA label with them. 959
- RRA methods are more
verbal, with outsiders more active, while PRA methods more visual, with
local people more active, but the methods are now largely shared. The
major distinction is between an RRA (extractive-elicitive) approach where
the main objective is data collection by outsiders, and a PRA
(sharing-empowering) approach where the main objectives are variously
investigation, analysis, learning, planning, action, monitoring and
evaluation by insiders. 959
- One view was manuals of
methods should be avoided; that the PRA principle of "used your best
own judgment at all times" permitted and encouraged creativity; that
manuals led to teaching and learning by rote, the ritual performance of
methods for their own sake, and a loss of flexibility. Basic descriptions
of methods were considered enough. In early 1994 most of the leading PRA
practitioners were working in this mode but a number of manuals, handbooks
and sourcebooks had been compiled. 959
- Participatory analysis
of secondary sources. The most common form is the analysis of aerial photographs
(often best at 1:5000) to identify soil types, land conditions, land
tenure etc; satellite imagery has also been used. 960
- Matrix scoring and
ranking, especially using matrices and seeds to compare through
scoring, for example different trees, or soils, or methods of soil and
water conservation, or varieties of a crop; 960
- Key probes;
questions which can lead direct to key issues such as--"What do you
talk about when you are together?" "What new practices have you
or others in this village experimented with in recent years?"
"What vegetable, tree, crop, crop variety, type of animal, tool,
equipment…would you like to try out?" What do you do when someone's
hut or house burns down?" 960
- Women and gender:
participatory appraisal of problems and opportunities. 961
- For several reasons, there
are still, in early 1994, few case studies of the impact of PRA as
development process. First, PRA is recent, and many PRA processes are
still in their early stages. Second, responding to demand and their own
sense of priorities, experienced practitioners have been mostly engaged in
training and appraisal rather than monitoring and evaluation, and this
emphasis is reflected in the reports they have written. Third, in the
first years of PRA, academic researchers were slow to recognize what was
happening. These were conditions in which negative experiences were liable
to be overlooked. In the mid 1990s more feedback is needed from failures,
from those who have experienced PRA and not subsequently adopted it, and
from organizations where attempts to introduce it have not been
successful. 962
- By early 1994, the most
systematic impact analysis of PRA compared with alternatives has been a
participatory study conducted in Kenya in April-May 1993. Six areas of the
Catchment Approach Program of the Soil and Water Conservation Branch of
the Ministry of Agriculture were studied. Performance indicators included
maize yields, diversity of crops, reappearance of springs and/or increase
in surface water flow, continuing activity by a catchment committee, and
awareness and adoption in neighboring communities. The study showed that
performance had been worst in a showcase catchment where the approach had
not been participatory. The impact indicators were generally higher where
catchment committees were freely elected, and where farmers had
participated in planning and layout, and they were consistently best in
the catchment where the program had begun with an interdepartmental PRA.
There remains a research agenda to understand better the applications and
potentials of PRA, its processes and impacts, and its shortcomings and
strengths. 963
- Outsiders' reality
blanketed that of local people. They "put down" the poor.
Outsiders' beliefs, demeanor, behavior and attitudes were then
self-validating. Treated as incapable, poor people behaved as incapable,
reflecting the beliefs of the powerful, and hiding their capabilities even
from themselves. Nor did many outsider professionals know how to enable
local people to express, share and extend their knowledge. 963
- For participatory
approaches and methods to take off, a stage had also to be reached when
different conditions could come together: recognition of past error and
inadequacy, as had occurred with much agricultural research for
resource-poor farmers; greater confidence and professionalism in rural
NGOs; the invention of approaches such as agroecosystem analysis which
simply did not exist before the 1980s; and the emergence of an
international community of communication. 963
- The most important element
of all has been the insight that in facilitating PRA the behavior and
attitudes of outsiders matter more than the methods and their correct
performance. Perhaps then it is understandable that it has taken so long
for these participatory approaches and methods, in their many forms and
with their many labels, to evolve, cluster and coalesce, and to spread, as
philosophy, repertoire and practice. Perhaps, in the 1990s, their time has
come. 963
Anand, S. and Sen A. (2000) "Human Development and Economic
Sustainability," World Development, Vol. 28, No. 12, pp. 2029-2049.
- "It is justice, not
charity, that is wanting in the world," wrote Mary Wollstonecraft,
the pioneering feminist, in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,
published in 1972.
- ...while ancient Greek
philosophers presented some of the most far-reaching analyses of
individual independence and autonomy, they typically did not hesitate to
leave out the slaves--and often women too--from the discourse. The
language and the rhetoric as well as the reality of rights in the
contemporary world are often characterized by the neglect of particular
sections of the population--less privileged ethnic groups, exploited
classes, sequestered women. 2029
- The growing concern of
"sustainable development" reflects a basic belief that the
interests of future generations should receive the same kind of attention
that those in the present generation get. 2030
- There is, in principle, no
basic difficulty in broadening the concept of human development to
accommodate the claims of the future generations and the urgency of
environmental protection. 2030
- The exclusive concentration
only on incomes at the aggregative or individual levels ignores the
plurality of influences that differentiate the real opportunities of
people, and implicitly assumes away the variations--related to personal
characteristics as well as the social and physical environment--in the
possibility of converting the means of income into the ends of good and
livable lives which people have reason to value. 2031
- How can we possibly give
priority to the means of living, which is what treasures and wealth
are, over the ends of good and free human lives? 2032
- ...even where there is a
generally positive and statistically significant relationship between GNP
per head and indicators of quality of life in the gross intercountry data,
much of that relationship turns on the use of extra income in the specific
fields of public education and health, and in reducing absolute poverty.
2032
- What is also of
importance…is the route through which growth of GNP most effectively
influences human development. Economic growth not only involves increases
in private incomes, it can also significantly contribute to generating
resources that can be marshaled to improve social services (such as public
healthcare, epidemiological protection, basic education, safe drinking
water, etc.). In some cases such marshalling is effectively done, while in
other cases, the fruits of growth are put to little use of this kind. 2032
- ...while the expansion of
private income certainly is of instrumental importance in enhancing basic
capabilities, the effectiveness of that impact depends much on the distribution
of the newly generated incomes. 2032
- The idea of sustainable
development arose essentially from concerns relating to the over
exploitation of natural and environmental resources. Early discussions
stressed the limits of economic activity imposed by the physical
environment, and concluded that species and ecosystems should be utilized
in ways that allow them to go on renewing themselves indefinitely. 2033
- The causal relations that
would underlie any practical application of the approach of sustainable
development must take note of this complexity in the means-end relations.
2037
- We have emphasized that
sustainability is a matter of distributional equity in a very broad
sense, that is, of sharing the capacity for well-being between present
people and future people in an acceptable way--that is in a way which
neither the present generation nor the future generations can readily reject.
2038
- Redistribution to the poor
in the form of improving their health, education, and nutrition is not
only intrinsically important--in enhancing their capabilities to lead more
fulfilling lives--but it is also instrumentally important in increasing
their "human capital" with lasting influence in the future. 2038
- Thus human development
should be seen as a major contribution to the achievement of sustainability.
2038
- poverty alleviation has
been suggested as an instrument to protect the environment from
degradation. 2038
- Immanuel Kant's injunction
"to treat humanity" ultimately "as an end withal, never as
mean only" remains just as powerful, even when the great importance
of human capital in economic growth is appropriate acknowledged. 2039
- optimality and
sustainability are logically distinct criteria of development. One
cannot be deduced from the other as a necessary consequence. 2042