Growing the Wealth of the Poor - World Resources Institute

Investing in the social capital of the poor is particularlyimportant for ecosystem management. Managing the commonpool resources that are often at issue requires communityapproaches—bolstered by the strengths of poor people’s groupsand social networks. The empowerment, connectedness, andcommercial outreach that these groups bring are crucial offsetsto the marginalization that plagues the rural poor and isolatestheir business ventures.The Changing Development ParadigmThe foundations of a scalable approach to environmentalincome have been long in the making. Since the late 1980s therehas been a growing realization that poor families and ruralcommunities must be the driving force in resource managementif this management is to truly benefit them. The move to decentralizenatural resource authorities and embrace localparticipation is just one aspect of a shift in development practicetoward “bottom-up” approaches. These community-basedapproaches—often called community-driven development—seelocal households and communities as the proper origin andcenter of development, not simply as beneficiaries of developmentschemes dictated from above (Shah 2006:1).The Lessons of Community-Driven DevelopmentDevelopment institutions such as the World Bank and theUN Development Programme have increasingly turned tocommunity-driven development as the shortcomings of topdowndevelopment projects have become clear. A 2005 WorldBank study showed that projects that include a communitydrivencomponent have grown from 2 percent of the WorldBank project portfolio in 1989 to 25 percent in 2003 (WorldBank 2005:ix).The Bank’s interest stems from years of research andexperience indicating that community empowerment has animportant role to play in encouraging pro-poor growth, increasingthe effectiveness of development projects, and promotingpoverty reduction. The lesson is that empowering communitiesto participate in their own development not only respects theirinherent rights, it leads to more successful outcomes (Narayan2002:1–11).In addition to empowering communities through participatoryprocesses, CDD—at least as practiced by the WorldBank—has four other major components. The first is empoweringlocal governments by granting them significant fiscal powers overdevelopment project budgets. A second component is reformulatingthe role of the central government so that decentralizationdoes not lead to abandoning communities entirely to their ownresources but instead joining with them in co-management or jointventures, drawing on the strengths of each level of government.Improving “downward accountability” is another importantdimension of CDD, meaning that service providers and local andcentral governments must be accountable to local communities fortheir development decisions. A final vital CDD component iscapacity development—enabling local organizations and citizensto improve their skills and problem-solving abilities through training,facilitation, and hands-on experience (Binswanger andNguyen 2004:9–10).While there is growing acceptance of the basic tenets ofCDD, applying these tenets successfully through normal developmentchannels has achieved mixed results so far, particularlyin rural areas. Outcome ratings for World Bank–funded CDDprojects undertaken from 1994 to 2003 were, on average, betterthan those for traditional top-down projects, demonstrating thevalue of the approach and its ability to be applied at a significantscale. In Benin, for example, community members in 229villages used a Bank-supported participatory planning approachto identify priority problems, prepare action plans, take part inliteracy and technical training courses, and successfully carry outnearly 300 infrastructure projects as part of the Benin BorgouPilot Project (World Bank 2005:xiii,17). In Senegal, an independentreview of the country’s National Rural InfrastructuresProgram—which adopts a community-driven approach to buildingschools, health clinics, access roads, and water and sanitationinfrastructure—found that the program had achieved significantresults in extending access to clean water and health services torural villagers (Arcand and Bassole 2007:1).26