Capítulo III: Subsistencia y resistencia de la agricultura familiar campesina 5 Paine y su historia de resistencia
6.2 Las manifestaciones como expresión de resistencia
evolution, traits and outcomes of Leader are explicitly discussed.
Lastly, it should be stressed that the objective of this review is not to be fully exhaustive, but to understand the relative position of ABD in the general context of local development. At a later stage, this review will be further expanded to include other relevant alternative approaches, while simultaneously expanding the common theoretical linkage to development economics.
2.3.1 Approaches to local rural development in developing countries
i. Integrated Rural Development (IRD)
Integrated Rural Development (IRD) focuses on small-scale agriculture as a reaction to the prevalence of large-scale, industrial agriculture (FAO, 2007). It was a rather popular and broad movement among those working on international development assistance in the 1970s and it reached its peak in the beginning of the 1980s.
In this approach, it is recognised that rural societies and their well-being do not depend solely on the situation of farmers and that off-farm activities and agents play a crucial role in securing sustained socio-economic development. Consequently, a holistic and multi-sectorial dimension was present when designing development interventions. Common practices involved providing opportunities for non-farm or non-agricultural employment and income generation (for instance, in environment or heritage preservation activities). This entailed an analysis of rural and urban linkages along with community planning on natural resource management, credit, business development communal infrastructure, etc. Strong emphasis was thus also placed on the development of local infrastructures and the provision of some basic services which today are considered to be key functions of national governments.
However, despite IRD’s pioneer theoretical multi-sectorial approach (and intended bottom-up nature) to address rural development, in practice, the implemented projects tended to be production- oriented, large-scale and top-down interventions, thus failing to achieve their ambitious objective. In addition, the notions of local capacity building and institutional sustainability were not given much attention in IRD projects initially, and local communities were not appropriately included in development processes. Although early evaluations were positive, follow-on project evaluations resulted in unsatisfactory performance, ultimately leading to a shift towards broader systemic poverty alleviation initiatives (such as the World Bank’s Poverty Reduction Strategies) (USAID, 2006). Some of the identified limitations evolved around the existence or rather the non- existence of three main aspects: 1. right incentives for different stakeholders, 2. sound institutions and policies, and 3. knowledge-sharing initiatives (USAID, 2006).
Nevertheless, given the importance of IRD in the overall evaluation of rural policy, a variety of participatory/community-based approaches flourished in subsequent years and some of the most influential (as identified by FAO (2006)) will be commented further. Simultaneously, it will be argued throughout the description of each approach that unlike the ABD approach, these approaches share common weaknesses, given their particular focus on stakeholders as the main starting point of analysis.
ii. Participatory Negotiated Territorial Development (PNTD)
Like the ABD approach, the PNTD approach, developed by the FAO, pays great attention to the role of linkages between territories and linkages at the national level as well. Such linkages are said to contribute to the creation of flows and dynamics which are beneficial to local development. In PNTD, this type of analysis ‘allows identifying and assessing the existence of competition over space and resources and the conflicting interests
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of different actors, highlighting the initial lack of trust between them as a key disadvantage’ (FAO, 2006). Therefore, PNTD promotes a ‘consensual decision-making process which involves all the actors of the territory in finding solutions for development issues on the basis of socio-political considerations rather than on purely technical or economical concerns’ (FAO, 2006). PNTD thus has the inclusion and consultation of local actors (bottom-up) in common with the ABD approach. Unlike the ABD approach (which is based on a particular problem (or set of problems) unique to a specific geographical zone) PNDT’s main objective is to address the question of how local actors can be empowered to use available assets for their development projects. In other words, the approach focuses on the stakeholders and the consequent mobilisation of local resources for territorial development through decentralisation. Similarly, it pretends to stimulate dialogue and social change. Resembling many other assistance projects, its key challenge (besides determining appropriate timeframe and needed human and financial resources) is to define indicators for the evaluation of interventions which show clear progress attributable to the PNTD process.
An adapted version of PNTD has been implemented in Bosnia (PLUD: Participatory Land Use Development), in particular in the municipalities of Srebrenica and Višegrad. The core of the PLUD methodology is to place the people (who belong or are linked to a particular territory) at the centre of the decision-making process (FAO, 2004). Different to what its name suggests, this model entirely focuses on the stakeholders rather than on the land use or the land use planning. PLUD aims to use the stakeholders’ knowledge and experience of their own territory to understand their needs and priorities. Once these are determined, the next step is to assist them in reaching the goals that they have set. In this scenario, the role of the policy maker or practitioner is to communicate complex issues to a wide variety of stakeholders in order to build consensus and help them to establish mechanisms to achieve the objectives
they have formulated clearly. This raises some specific weaknesses related to the securing a balance between power differentials among diverse groups of stakeholders. According to the Bradford Centre for International Development (BCID) (2007), ‘approaches which promote local participation in service-delivery and management are not necessarily effective at promoting wide community ownership and empowerment of the poor. Wealthier, older men will tend to appropriate new participatory spaces unless there is external facilitation of the rights and abilities of excluded people to do so’. From this description, this approach seems to mainly share the bottom- up and territorial approach with ABD’s features.
iii. Community-Driven Development (CDD) The World Bank’s (2003) Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper Sourcebook defines CDD as an approach that gives control over planning decisions and investment resources for local development projects to community groups. Once again, the underlying assumption is that people (individuals or communities) are the best judges of how their lives and livelihoods can be improved and, if given adequate support, resources, and access to information, they can organize themselves to provide for their immediate needs (Asian Development Bank, 2006). Consequently, the focus is set on the target beneficiaries who are expected to contribute to the identification of local priorities and the actual implementation of development initiatives by supplying inputs directly (i.e. labour or funds) or indirectly (i.e. through management and supervision of contractors or operation and maintenance). In practice, the level of community participation can vary from simple information sharing, to social, economic, and political empowerment of community groups. According to the Asian Development Bank (2006) the differentiating characteristic of this approach is that it promotes community control of resources. However, the two previously discussed approaches also share and promote this trait. An additional difficulty in this respect