Growing the Wealth of the Poor - World Resources Institute

W O R L D R E S O U R C E S 2 0 0 8This chapter emphasizes the role of local organizations andlocal branches of government in bringing about these conditions.These local actors, which encompass village councils,savings groups, farmers’ organizations, NGOs, producercooperatives, worker associations, resource user groups, and arange of other formal and informal groups, provide the mechanismsthrough which joint resource management and enterprisedevelopment occur in the rural sphere.The chapter also examines intermediary support organizations(ISOs) that help connect and enable community-levelgroups and that act as bridges between local groups and higherlevels of government and business. Without these trusted intermediaries,the rural poor would have a much more difficult timegaining the skills, financing, and authority necessary to carry outsuccessful nature-based enterprises. The capacity developmentthat these organizations enable and the political connections thatthey bring to the table are key elements of successful scaling up.In examining the elements of scaling up nature-basedenterprises, we realize that no list of “best practices,” howeverwell-grounded in observation and practice, can be regarded asa blueprint for success. Community-driven enterprises, andparticularly nature-based enterprises, are always a product ofthe unique social, cultural, and resource context in which theyarise. Slow and persistent learning by doing, where local participantsgradually adapt their collective resource managementand business practices to the local situation and capacities ofthe group, is perhaps the only consistent best practice (Mansuriand Rao 2003:37). Nonetheless, isolating common experiencesand challenges within an identifiable theoretical frame, as wedo here, offers an undeniable opportunity for learning at amacro level, so that support for scaling up ecosystem enterpriseis well conceived.48