Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
are two contrasting paradigms of sustainable development that prevail
today. The first is rooted in neoliberal thinking and views unsustain-
able development as a result of chronic poverty and inappropriate tech-
nology. Focusing on technological, educational and market-based
solutions to mobilizing rural communities to manage their natural
resources more effectively, this approach sees sustainable development
as a product of effective linkages between government, civil society and
industry (see Chapter 5.2), and has resonance with the findings of
Agenda 21 and the 1992 UNCED meeting in Rio de Janeiro. Another
equally powerful paradigm argues that sustainability must be grounded
in political and socio-economic frameworks that emphasize social justice
and power relations (Redclift, 1987; Smith et al., 2007). For many schol-
ars, unsustainable development is the product of an inequitable global
capitalist system that produced widespread structural inequalities at a
range of spatial scales. From this perspective, sustainable development
requires a redistribution of the world's resources and widespread social
change
at both global and local scales (Redclift, 2008).
The mainstreaming of livelihood perspectives in development theory
and practice in the 1990s was paramount in bringing together new
understandings of sustainable development and poverty through a
focus on people's own interpretations and priorities. As was argued
earlier, interest in the livelihoods of the rural poor can largely be attrib-
uted to the work of Robert Chambers and a groundbreaking paper that
proposed that a livelihood consisted of the
capabilities
, material and
social
assets
and
activities
needed to make a living (Chambers and
Conway, 1992). Chambers identified the importance of
intangible
ways
of accessing assets (such as social networks) as well as those that were
more
tangible
and easily measured (land or property ownership).
Livelihood perspectives also aimed to put people back in the centre of
the development process, recognizing their agency over decision mak-
ing and seeing them as actors not victims. Moreover, a sustainable
livelihood was one that could combat risk and shocks and stresses with-
out undermining the livelihood opportunities of the next generation.
These approaches were also grounded in the development of participa-
tory research methods, such as Rural Rapid Appraisal (RRA) and
Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), which were devised to under-
stand rural poverty and vulnerability at the local scale.
Livelihood approaches symbolized an elemental shift in develop-
ment thinking from top-down, macro-development policies that
viewed the rural poor as victims of structural constraints, to a more
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