Development Planning Essay
Essay on Development Planning
Type: Essay
Learning Objectives Assessed: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Due Date:
31 May 10
Weight: 60%
Task Description: Students to select an essay topic from six (6) choices. These essays will encourage students to demonstrate a critical understanding of both planning and development practice, using case studies. The word limit will be 3000 words.
Criteria & Marking: Evidence of understanding of the question and related issues (20%)
Structure of the paper, which should demonstrate logical flow and ordering of the argument (20%)
Identification and effective use of material, including material beyond that provided by the lecturer (20%)
Evidence of critical and independent thought and argument (20%)
Appropriate and consistent referencing of sources used, effectively presented (20%)
Essay topic:
"Communities are at the heart of development and should be at the forefront of development planning and practice" - critically examine this statement paying reference to both the strengths and weaknesses of community-based development. You may focus here on participatory planning, participatory budgeting, etc.
Jen Lee Teh (42263083)
PLAN 7612 Development Planning
University of Queensland
31 May 2010
Should communities be at the forefront of development planning and practice?
Development theorists and specialists have debated the role of community participation in development since the 1970s (Botes & van Rensburg 2000). The general failure of top-down approaches under the modernisation paradigm to bring about the benefits of Western-styled development to most countries had resulted in the push for a more bottom-up emphasis. Community participation is premised on the belief that communities are at the heart of development and therefore, they should be at the forefront of development planning and practice. This paper will critically evaluate this principle of participation by looking at the strengths and weaknesses of community-based development. This will be done through examples of practices associated with community-based, or participatory development, such as participatory planning and participatory budgeting.
Before I begin, I will clarify the definition of ‘participation’ for the purpose of this discussion as this word means different things to different people. White (1994, p. 16) called it “kaleidoscopic…because participation is a complex and dynamic phenomenon, seen from the ‘eye of the beholder’, and shaped by the ‘hand of the powerholder’.” Nevertheless, two levels of participation emerged in a review of development participation literature by Deshler and Sock (1985, cited by White 1994). Using concept mapping, they differentiated between pseudo-participation, which involves domestication (e.g. informing, manipulating) and assistencialism (includes placating and consulting), and genuine participation in which cooperation (referring to partnership and delegation of power) and citizen control, i.e. empowerment, is evidenced.
White (1994) elaborated that pseudo-participation is where control over a project and the power to make decisions lies with planners and administrators, along with elites from the community. People participation is limited to only being present to hear what is being planned for and done to them. In contrast, genuine participation is when people work with development agents at every stage of decision-making and they can choose what action should be taken. In this paper, I will look at the strengths and weaknesses of genuine participation as I consider pseudo-participation to be fundamentally the same as the top-down approach to development, which has been extensively critiqued since it started losing credibility in the 1970s (Melkote & Steeves 2001).
Strengths of community-based development
In her article “Depoliticising development: The uses and abuses of participation”, Sarah White (1996) noted an example in the Philippines where issues of efficiency, sustainability and empowerment were addressed when hillside families developed and managed their own projects. These three issues represent the key strengths of community-based development and I will elaborate on them in this section.
Greater efficiency comes about because people are more likely to support something that they had a hand in shaping, so there will be better outcomes. Uphoff (1997, p. 210) wrote, “development expenditures are likely to be more worthwhile to the extent that projects are planned in ways that involve the intended beneficiaries”. An example of this is in the Jamaican community organisation, the Community Organisation for Management and Sustainable Development (COMAND). Created in 1996, it comprises 30 community trust organisations (as of 2004) that provide savings plans and other services that aim to provide effective housing solutions to the poor. It has about 14,000 members nationwide and forms strategic alliances with partners including landowners and other private sector representatives, local and national government agencies and the United Nations Development Programme (Tindigarukayo 2004).
The COMAND partnership was initiated by squatter residents in a district known as Retirement, who had started community organisations to look into what was lacking in their neighbourhoods. They began by setting up community savings trusts for 112 squatter households. There was consensus to create COMAND and work collectively so that the community organisations could increase their effectiveness in responding to challenges. The partnership not only tackles the present problem of housing for the poor, but it also empowers the community groups by cultivating leadership training skills that will be needed to address future problems. Power shifts to the community residents and away from government. Total community involvement through capacity building, leadership and team management, provides communities with the skills they need to plan and execute development initiatives (Fiszbein & Lowden 1999).
Eight years after its creation, COMAND has been able to divide land in Retirement into 525 lots and also to accumulate J$5 million in savings, enabling families to purchase the lots and have formal tenure. They have also successfully provided sanitation and recreation facilities, as well as services such as advocacy of community needs to the authorities, leadership training seminars, and legal or technical assistance in savings plans and resettlement programmes (Tindigarukayo 2004). The COMAND model of integrated community development around issues of land tenure and housing was so successful that it served as the basis for the design of Jamaica’s national low-cost housing programme, Operation PRIDE (Programme for Resettlement and Integrated Development Enterprise). One of PRIDE’s policies involves participation in that potential beneficiaries under the programme must form a legal community-based organisation that will handle all facets of planning and implementing the PRIDE programme.
In my next example from Cebu City in the Philippines, I will look at how participatory planning highlights another key strength of community-based development, which is enhanced sustainability. An assessment of poverty alleviation programmes by government agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) by Etemadi (2000) led to her observation that participatory planning has been practised by the NGOs for a long time in their community-based projects. Some of the activities undertaken by the NGOs include conducting participatory rapid appraisals of communities to determine baseline information, community organising and leadership training. By involving community leaders and members, they analyse problems, set out objectives, decide on strategies, identify key players and their roles, determine what resources are needed and establish indicators that can be verified for monitoring. Such processes help people understand and improve their situation better as they may not be aware of some factors that affect their environment.
Government officials with NGO backgrounds have led the way in implementing participatory planning in government initiatives. Examples of this include the organising of area task forces and community monitors in villages (or barangays) where the Urban Basic Services Programme is being carried out and the involvement of community-based street educators in the Task Force on Street Children. Conversely, NGOs have organised community-based water users associations and trained peer educators for the AIDS Surveillance and Education Project in joint undertakings with the government. Etemadi (2000, p. 70) wrote that “(i)ntegration of community organisation and participatory planning not only enhances service delivery but also increases project sustainability. The beneficiaries are not only passive recipients but are, themselves, the principal actors in the project”.
The third key strength of putting communities at the heart of development planning and practice is empowerment. This can be seen in the example of participatory budgeting (PB), which was pioneered in Porto Alegre, Brazil, against a backdrop of neighbourhood movements all over the country in the 1970s. Residents of poorer districts protested against the government’s failure to provide infrastructure and services, linking their demands to issues of civic rights and staging high-profile disruptive actions like roadblocks. Civil society was mobilising against the military dictatorship, as was the Workers’ Party. This was the context within which the movements collectively demanded a democratisation of the budget (Fedozzi 2000a, as cited by Novy & Leubolt 2005). Olivio Dutra of the Workers’ Party, who was running for mayor in 1988, called for the prioritisation of socially marginalised groups and PB was to be the mechanism through which democratisation of the local state would take place.
The aspects of PB that enable empowerment are its participatory decision-making processes. Not only do participants suggest projects, but they are also responsible for ranking those proposed projects. The ranking exercise takes place in regional and thematic meetings, during which participants elect among themselves representatives who will be tasked to handle further discussions with the municipal government. Porto Alegre residents also contribute in making decisions on distribution criteria as there are no preset administrative or economic guidelines governing this. Review of the criteria happens annually, and modifications can be made to the procedural rules in PB, so people are empowered to learn and adapt to new conditions. With empowerment, the communities involved in PB have been able to make choices that satisfy their basic needs. For example, the proportion of homes connected to the sewage network increased from 46 per cent in 1989 to 85 per cent in 1996, and access to running water went from 80 per cent to 98 per cent within the same timeframe. Education improvements were also evident in the number of school-going children more than doubling between 1989 and 1999. Citing Marquetti (2002), Novy and Leubolt (2005) said research has shown that PB has benefitted groups, such as the women and the poor, who are usually excluded from public life, so there’s empowerment for these specific groups in particular.
Weaknesses of community-based development
While the benefits of community participation outlined above are real, the bottom-up participatory approach should not be romanticised as there are serious limitations that need critical analysis (Smith 2008). In her article, she highlighted what she considers to be the four most problematic and pertinent critiques of the participatory approach. These are (pp. 358-359):
1. tokenistic attempts at a participatory process,
2. the myths of ‘communities’ as coherent and cohesive bodies working towards unified goals,
3. the fundamental lack of financial capacity of some bottom-up projects, and
4. critical insufficiency of knowledge about the process of community participation and its complex nature, resulting in poor facilitation.
The first point refers to pseudo-participation, which is not within the scope of this discussion. Other writers have also raised the other three weaknesses, which I will elaborate on in this section along with what can be done to overcome this weakness.
Cleaver (1999) questioned the myths of ‘community’ in participatory development approaches such as the assumption that there is one obvious community in any location and that this would be linked to natural resource, social and administrative confines. This goes to the heart of community-based development because “(t)he very definition of community in development projects involves defining those who are ‘included’ in rights, activities, benefits and those who are excluded because they do not belong to the defined entity” (p. 603). He went on to say that the idea of self-evident communities persists despite evidence of the “overlapping, shifting and subjective nature of ‘communities’”. Linked to this myth is the ‘solidarity’ model of community, where power inequalities as well as processes of conflict and negotiation between people often go unrecognised or they are oversimplified.
Another myth about community pertains to the belief of their unlimited resourcefulness, that they can do anything as long as they are sufficiently mobilised. Along with this perspective is a positive view of culture, for example, Chambers (1997, cited by Cleaver 1999) attributes a moral value to the knowledge, attitudes and practices of the poor. But what if local ‘culture’ oppresses certain groups (Cleaver 1999)? The caste system in India is a good illustration of this. Cleaver believes that there is “danger from swinging from one untenable position (‘we know best’) to an equally untenable and damaging one (‘they know best’)” (1999, p. 605). Botes and van Rensburg (2000) gave two examples in Kimberley, South Africa where rivalry between different groups in the communities severely limited how much headway could be made using the participatory approach. In Tswaragano, a small squatter settlement of 270 homes, a joint housing proposal was stalled for a year and a half, and it took four mediation attempts, 10 meetings and the exchange of many harsh words before two rival community organisations would agree to work together. In Boikhutsong, a community of 780 households, things got so bad that the community centre was set on fire and two residents were killed.
These examples point to the importance of understanding community heterogeneity as a prerequisite for successful participation. Based on their study of community water supplies construction and management in Angola, Godfrey and Obika (2004) concludes that participation can bring about more locally appropriate outcomes if it includes this two-stage approach – first, identifying the different groups who have varied needs and aspirations, and then having a process of “social inclusion” involving potential leaders in the community. Enough attention has to be devoted to analysing how the complex nature of communities and their heterogeneous elements can affect outcomes of projects, policies and programmes (Agrawal and Gibson 2001, cited by Smith 2008).
Even in cases where there are communities that are well-organised and motivated, the participatory approach can sometimes fail due to a fundamental lack of material resources. This weakness is seen in the example of Sando village in Zimbabwe, which was noted for being self-reliant and having a cohesive sense of community. The villagers had built their own school, started groups to generate income and were a creative and resilient community in every sense. However, they could not get their water borehole to function and had to travel 10km to another village’s borehole. Their situation arose from their remote location in the forest (away from district offices), with the water table being more than 100m deep, their limited political influence due to their small population, constraints on the government’s financing of new infrastructure, and their low incomes. They had a fund to buy a windmill and a system to collect money from households, but they simply could not get enough money for a new pump (Cleaver 1996 in Cleaver 2001). Referring to this example in her article, Smith (2008) said one key lesson to be learnt is how the economic and social capacity of communities must always be understood and taken into consideration in community engagement projects. The participatory approach alone is not enough to overcome the limitation of insufficient resources.
The last weakness of community participation highlighted by Smith (2008) has to do with the inadequate knowledge about how to facilitate participation well. While this may not be an inherent weakness of the participatory approach, nevertheless it is important to analyse it because the participatory approach succeeds or fails based on how it is carried out.
An example of community-driven development that failed due to poor implementation can be seen in the World Bank’s Community Empowerment and Local Governance Project (CEP) in Timor-Leste. In 2000, the CEP was the key donor programme helping to rebuild community in the newly liberated country of Timor-Leste. Funds totalling US$18 million went to more than 400 local development councils that had been formed to meet their community’s development needs. However, instead of creating real participatory structures, the tight deadline imposed by the Bank to give out project funds and the bureaucratic project rules limited the council’s role to simply being “transmission lines to Bank-controlled dollars” (Moxham 2005, p. 522). One of the key elements of proper facilitation of participation is sufficient time. In Timor-Leste, training timetables were cut short so participatory training topics had be cancelled. In addition, there was widespread community confusion over the project’s elaborate rules and the council’s novel structures, as there was not enough time to explain these adequately. A district CEP worker noted the irony, “they’d ask us to finish in two months but the community would not understand the project and this would create conflict. As a result, it would end up taking four months” (p. 524).
It is also important to go through the right channels for successful community participation. The councils bypassed existing structures of governance, including those within the new government, which meant that they bypassed local sources of legitimacy and knowledge. This led to conflict or indifference among the community members and poor sustainability of projects. In particular, the CEP’s microcredit scheme was poorly run, resulting in too many women, many of them widows, setting up roadside kiosks that cannot sell enough of anything to remain viable. A World Bank researcher concluded that only 30 per cent of the microcredit loans would be paid back as the rest of the women will not make enough money. So although the project did achieve some success, such as improving access to better quality water, its failures were more prominent and very costly. Moxham (2005) cited a World Bank Background Paper to the Timor-Leste and Development Partners in 2003, which reported that 58 cents out of every dollar spent went to overheads, mainly to prevent the CEP from being derailed due to its many problems.
Preventing similar fiascos and waste of resources would require the provision of appropriate preparation for those who need to know how to engage with communities and facilitate participation. holistic approach to training should be taken, which not only includes background research and the use of information guides, but also interactive forums and open discussions with experienced facilitators who can give practical suggestions. In addition, site visits to communities who have been involved in participatory projects would give a better understanding of how the projects have worked or failed in terms of goals achievement and sustainability (Chambers 1997 in Smith 2008).
Conclusion
In their article on community participation in development, Botes and van Rensburg (2000) concludes that involving people can take a lot of time and delay decisions. They quoted Gilbert (1987, p. 75) who wrote, “the only valid conclusion that can be drawn is one of tempered enthusiasm for the idea of community participation, and then always subject to local circumstances” (p. 56). Other writers are more critical, for example, Waisbord (2008, p. 508) said participation has become a “meaningless and bland term, a decorative piece in a system that continues to keep states, agencies, and experts in control”. The limits of the participatory approach, as described above, could have contributed to this. Nevertheless, there are very real advantages from involving community in the heart of development planning and practice, and these are unlikely to be realised in any other way. As Botes and van Rensburg (2000, p. 56) writes, “Development in the full sense of the word is not possible without appropriate community participation”. The key challenge is in how to make community participation appropriate in the midst of complexity and heterogeneity. As communities are the ones who will be most affected by development projects, they should be at the forefront of development, but more critical analysis of the limits of community-based development is needed. I agree and end with Smith’s assessment (2008, p. 358):
what is most helpful and necessary is for the most problematic elements and critiques (of people-centred projects) to be clearly defined and discussed, so that they can be utilised as opportunities for learning and improvement. Only then can the participatory approach mature as a theory and a practice and evolve into the most efficient, empowering and sustainable approach to environmental management.
Word count: 3,111
REFERENCES
Botes, L & van Rensberg, D 2000, ‘Community participation in development: nine plagues and twelve commandments’, Community Development Journal, vol. 35, no. 1, pp 41-58, viewed 11 May 2010 < http://cdj.oxfordjournals.org.ezproxy.library.uq.edu.au>
Cleaver, F 1999, ‘Paradoxes of participation: Questioning participatory approaches to development’, Journal of International Development, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 597-612, viewed 27 May 2010,
Cleaver, F 2001, ‘Institutions, agency and the limitations of participatory approaches to development’, in B Cooke & U Kothari (eds.), Participation: The new tyranny?, Zed Books, USA, pp. 36-55, viewed 19 May 2010,
Etemadi, FU 2000, ‘Civil society participation in city governance in Cebu City’, Environment and Urbanization, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 57-72, viewed 27 May 2010,
Fiszbein, A & Lowden, P 1999, Working together for a change: Government, business and civic partnership for poverty reduction in Latin America and the Caribbean, The World Bank, USA, viewed 29 May 2010,
Godfrey, S & Obika, A 2004, ‘Improved community participation: Lessons from water supply programmes in Angola’, Community Development Journal, vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 156-165, viewed 30 May 2010,
Melkote, SR & Steeves, HL 2001, Communication for development in the Third World: Theory and practice for empowerment, 2nd edn, Sage Publications, New Delhi.
Moxham, B 2005, ‘The World Bank's land of kiosks: Community driven development in Timor-Leste’, Development in Practice, vol. 15, issue 3-4, pp. 522-528, viewed 27 May 2010,
Novy, A & Leubolt, B 2005, ‘Participatory Budgeting in Porto Alegre: Social Innovation and the Dialectical Relationship of State and Civil Society’, Urban Studies, vol. 42, no. 11, pp. 2023-2036, viewed 11 May 2010,
Smith, JL 2008, ‘A critical appreciation of the “bottom-up” approach to sustainable water management: embracing complexity rather than desirability’, Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 353-366, viewed 27 May 2010,
Tindigarukayo, J 2004, ‘An attempt to empower Jamaican squatters’, Environment and Urbanization, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 199-209, viewed 17 April 2010,
Waisbord, S 2008, ‘The institutional challenges of participatory communication in international aid’, Social Identities, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 505-522, viewed 26 May 2010,
White, SA 1994, ‘The concept of participation: transforming rhetoric to reality’ in SA White, KS Nair, & J Ashcroft (eds.), Participatory communication: working for change and development, SAGE publications, India.
Uphoff, N 1997, ‘Fitting projects to people’, in S Sepulveda & R Edwards (eds.), Sustainable development, social organization, institutional arrangements and rural development: Selected readings, Inter-American Institute for Cooperation for Agriculture (IICA), BMZ/GTZ, Costa Rica, pp. 209-237, viewed 27 May 2010,
White, SC 1996, ‘Depoliticising development: the uses and abuses of participation’, Development in Practice, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 6-15, viewed 28 May 2010,
Type: Essay
Learning Objectives Assessed: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Due Date:
31 May 10
Weight: 60%
Task Description: Students to select an essay topic from six (6) choices. These essays will encourage students to demonstrate a critical understanding of both planning and development practice, using case studies. The word limit will be 3000 words.
Criteria & Marking: Evidence of understanding of the question and related issues (20%)
Structure of the paper, which should demonstrate logical flow and ordering of the argument (20%)
Identification and effective use of material, including material beyond that provided by the lecturer (20%)
Evidence of critical and independent thought and argument (20%)
Appropriate and consistent referencing of sources used, effectively presented (20%)
Essay topic:
"Communities are at the heart of development and should be at the forefront of development planning and practice" - critically examine this statement paying reference to both the strengths and weaknesses of community-based development. You may focus here on participatory planning, participatory budgeting, etc.
Jen Lee Teh (42263083)
PLAN 7612 Development Planning
University of Queensland
31 May 2010
Should communities be at the forefront of development planning and practice?
Development theorists and specialists have debated the role of community participation in development since the 1970s (Botes & van Rensburg 2000). The general failure of top-down approaches under the modernisation paradigm to bring about the benefits of Western-styled development to most countries had resulted in the push for a more bottom-up emphasis. Community participation is premised on the belief that communities are at the heart of development and therefore, they should be at the forefront of development planning and practice. This paper will critically evaluate this principle of participation by looking at the strengths and weaknesses of community-based development. This will be done through examples of practices associated with community-based, or participatory development, such as participatory planning and participatory budgeting.
Before I begin, I will clarify the definition of ‘participation’ for the purpose of this discussion as this word means different things to different people. White (1994, p. 16) called it “kaleidoscopic…because participation is a complex and dynamic phenomenon, seen from the ‘eye of the beholder’, and shaped by the ‘hand of the powerholder’.” Nevertheless, two levels of participation emerged in a review of development participation literature by Deshler and Sock (1985, cited by White 1994). Using concept mapping, they differentiated between pseudo-participation, which involves domestication (e.g. informing, manipulating) and assistencialism (includes placating and consulting), and genuine participation in which cooperation (referring to partnership and delegation of power) and citizen control, i.e. empowerment, is evidenced.
White (1994) elaborated that pseudo-participation is where control over a project and the power to make decisions lies with planners and administrators, along with elites from the community. People participation is limited to only being present to hear what is being planned for and done to them. In contrast, genuine participation is when people work with development agents at every stage of decision-making and they can choose what action should be taken. In this paper, I will look at the strengths and weaknesses of genuine participation as I consider pseudo-participation to be fundamentally the same as the top-down approach to development, which has been extensively critiqued since it started losing credibility in the 1970s (Melkote & Steeves 2001).
Strengths of community-based development
In her article “Depoliticising development: The uses and abuses of participation”, Sarah White (1996) noted an example in the Philippines where issues of efficiency, sustainability and empowerment were addressed when hillside families developed and managed their own projects. These three issues represent the key strengths of community-based development and I will elaborate on them in this section.
Greater efficiency comes about because people are more likely to support something that they had a hand in shaping, so there will be better outcomes. Uphoff (1997, p. 210) wrote, “development expenditures are likely to be more worthwhile to the extent that projects are planned in ways that involve the intended beneficiaries”. An example of this is in the Jamaican community organisation, the Community Organisation for Management and Sustainable Development (COMAND). Created in 1996, it comprises 30 community trust organisations (as of 2004) that provide savings plans and other services that aim to provide effective housing solutions to the poor. It has about 14,000 members nationwide and forms strategic alliances with partners including landowners and other private sector representatives, local and national government agencies and the United Nations Development Programme (Tindigarukayo 2004).
The COMAND partnership was initiated by squatter residents in a district known as Retirement, who had started community organisations to look into what was lacking in their neighbourhoods. They began by setting up community savings trusts for 112 squatter households. There was consensus to create COMAND and work collectively so that the community organisations could increase their effectiveness in responding to challenges. The partnership not only tackles the present problem of housing for the poor, but it also empowers the community groups by cultivating leadership training skills that will be needed to address future problems. Power shifts to the community residents and away from government. Total community involvement through capacity building, leadership and team management, provides communities with the skills they need to plan and execute development initiatives (Fiszbein & Lowden 1999).
Eight years after its creation, COMAND has been able to divide land in Retirement into 525 lots and also to accumulate J$5 million in savings, enabling families to purchase the lots and have formal tenure. They have also successfully provided sanitation and recreation facilities, as well as services such as advocacy of community needs to the authorities, leadership training seminars, and legal or technical assistance in savings plans and resettlement programmes (Tindigarukayo 2004). The COMAND model of integrated community development around issues of land tenure and housing was so successful that it served as the basis for the design of Jamaica’s national low-cost housing programme, Operation PRIDE (Programme for Resettlement and Integrated Development Enterprise). One of PRIDE’s policies involves participation in that potential beneficiaries under the programme must form a legal community-based organisation that will handle all facets of planning and implementing the PRIDE programme.
In my next example from Cebu City in the Philippines, I will look at how participatory planning highlights another key strength of community-based development, which is enhanced sustainability. An assessment of poverty alleviation programmes by government agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) by Etemadi (2000) led to her observation that participatory planning has been practised by the NGOs for a long time in their community-based projects. Some of the activities undertaken by the NGOs include conducting participatory rapid appraisals of communities to determine baseline information, community organising and leadership training. By involving community leaders and members, they analyse problems, set out objectives, decide on strategies, identify key players and their roles, determine what resources are needed and establish indicators that can be verified for monitoring. Such processes help people understand and improve their situation better as they may not be aware of some factors that affect their environment.
Government officials with NGO backgrounds have led the way in implementing participatory planning in government initiatives. Examples of this include the organising of area task forces and community monitors in villages (or barangays) where the Urban Basic Services Programme is being carried out and the involvement of community-based street educators in the Task Force on Street Children. Conversely, NGOs have organised community-based water users associations and trained peer educators for the AIDS Surveillance and Education Project in joint undertakings with the government. Etemadi (2000, p. 70) wrote that “(i)ntegration of community organisation and participatory planning not only enhances service delivery but also increases project sustainability. The beneficiaries are not only passive recipients but are, themselves, the principal actors in the project”.
The third key strength of putting communities at the heart of development planning and practice is empowerment. This can be seen in the example of participatory budgeting (PB), which was pioneered in Porto Alegre, Brazil, against a backdrop of neighbourhood movements all over the country in the 1970s. Residents of poorer districts protested against the government’s failure to provide infrastructure and services, linking their demands to issues of civic rights and staging high-profile disruptive actions like roadblocks. Civil society was mobilising against the military dictatorship, as was the Workers’ Party. This was the context within which the movements collectively demanded a democratisation of the budget (Fedozzi 2000a, as cited by Novy & Leubolt 2005). Olivio Dutra of the Workers’ Party, who was running for mayor in 1988, called for the prioritisation of socially marginalised groups and PB was to be the mechanism through which democratisation of the local state would take place.
The aspects of PB that enable empowerment are its participatory decision-making processes. Not only do participants suggest projects, but they are also responsible for ranking those proposed projects. The ranking exercise takes place in regional and thematic meetings, during which participants elect among themselves representatives who will be tasked to handle further discussions with the municipal government. Porto Alegre residents also contribute in making decisions on distribution criteria as there are no preset administrative or economic guidelines governing this. Review of the criteria happens annually, and modifications can be made to the procedural rules in PB, so people are empowered to learn and adapt to new conditions. With empowerment, the communities involved in PB have been able to make choices that satisfy their basic needs. For example, the proportion of homes connected to the sewage network increased from 46 per cent in 1989 to 85 per cent in 1996, and access to running water went from 80 per cent to 98 per cent within the same timeframe. Education improvements were also evident in the number of school-going children more than doubling between 1989 and 1999. Citing Marquetti (2002), Novy and Leubolt (2005) said research has shown that PB has benefitted groups, such as the women and the poor, who are usually excluded from public life, so there’s empowerment for these specific groups in particular.
Weaknesses of community-based development
While the benefits of community participation outlined above are real, the bottom-up participatory approach should not be romanticised as there are serious limitations that need critical analysis (Smith 2008). In her article, she highlighted what she considers to be the four most problematic and pertinent critiques of the participatory approach. These are (pp. 358-359):
1. tokenistic attempts at a participatory process,
2. the myths of ‘communities’ as coherent and cohesive bodies working towards unified goals,
3. the fundamental lack of financial capacity of some bottom-up projects, and
4. critical insufficiency of knowledge about the process of community participation and its complex nature, resulting in poor facilitation.
The first point refers to pseudo-participation, which is not within the scope of this discussion. Other writers have also raised the other three weaknesses, which I will elaborate on in this section along with what can be done to overcome this weakness.
Cleaver (1999) questioned the myths of ‘community’ in participatory development approaches such as the assumption that there is one obvious community in any location and that this would be linked to natural resource, social and administrative confines. This goes to the heart of community-based development because “(t)he very definition of community in development projects involves defining those who are ‘included’ in rights, activities, benefits and those who are excluded because they do not belong to the defined entity” (p. 603). He went on to say that the idea of self-evident communities persists despite evidence of the “overlapping, shifting and subjective nature of ‘communities’”. Linked to this myth is the ‘solidarity’ model of community, where power inequalities as well as processes of conflict and negotiation between people often go unrecognised or they are oversimplified.
Another myth about community pertains to the belief of their unlimited resourcefulness, that they can do anything as long as they are sufficiently mobilised. Along with this perspective is a positive view of culture, for example, Chambers (1997, cited by Cleaver 1999) attributes a moral value to the knowledge, attitudes and practices of the poor. But what if local ‘culture’ oppresses certain groups (Cleaver 1999)? The caste system in India is a good illustration of this. Cleaver believes that there is “danger from swinging from one untenable position (‘we know best’) to an equally untenable and damaging one (‘they know best’)” (1999, p. 605). Botes and van Rensburg (2000) gave two examples in Kimberley, South Africa where rivalry between different groups in the communities severely limited how much headway could be made using the participatory approach. In Tswaragano, a small squatter settlement of 270 homes, a joint housing proposal was stalled for a year and a half, and it took four mediation attempts, 10 meetings and the exchange of many harsh words before two rival community organisations would agree to work together. In Boikhutsong, a community of 780 households, things got so bad that the community centre was set on fire and two residents were killed.
These examples point to the importance of understanding community heterogeneity as a prerequisite for successful participation. Based on their study of community water supplies construction and management in Angola, Godfrey and Obika (2004) concludes that participation can bring about more locally appropriate outcomes if it includes this two-stage approach – first, identifying the different groups who have varied needs and aspirations, and then having a process of “social inclusion” involving potential leaders in the community. Enough attention has to be devoted to analysing how the complex nature of communities and their heterogeneous elements can affect outcomes of projects, policies and programmes (Agrawal and Gibson 2001, cited by Smith 2008).
Even in cases where there are communities that are well-organised and motivated, the participatory approach can sometimes fail due to a fundamental lack of material resources. This weakness is seen in the example of Sando village in Zimbabwe, which was noted for being self-reliant and having a cohesive sense of community. The villagers had built their own school, started groups to generate income and were a creative and resilient community in every sense. However, they could not get their water borehole to function and had to travel 10km to another village’s borehole. Their situation arose from their remote location in the forest (away from district offices), with the water table being more than 100m deep, their limited political influence due to their small population, constraints on the government’s financing of new infrastructure, and their low incomes. They had a fund to buy a windmill and a system to collect money from households, but they simply could not get enough money for a new pump (Cleaver 1996 in Cleaver 2001). Referring to this example in her article, Smith (2008) said one key lesson to be learnt is how the economic and social capacity of communities must always be understood and taken into consideration in community engagement projects. The participatory approach alone is not enough to overcome the limitation of insufficient resources.
The last weakness of community participation highlighted by Smith (2008) has to do with the inadequate knowledge about how to facilitate participation well. While this may not be an inherent weakness of the participatory approach, nevertheless it is important to analyse it because the participatory approach succeeds or fails based on how it is carried out.
An example of community-driven development that failed due to poor implementation can be seen in the World Bank’s Community Empowerment and Local Governance Project (CEP) in Timor-Leste. In 2000, the CEP was the key donor programme helping to rebuild community in the newly liberated country of Timor-Leste. Funds totalling US$18 million went to more than 400 local development councils that had been formed to meet their community’s development needs. However, instead of creating real participatory structures, the tight deadline imposed by the Bank to give out project funds and the bureaucratic project rules limited the council’s role to simply being “transmission lines to Bank-controlled dollars” (Moxham 2005, p. 522). One of the key elements of proper facilitation of participation is sufficient time. In Timor-Leste, training timetables were cut short so participatory training topics had be cancelled. In addition, there was widespread community confusion over the project’s elaborate rules and the council’s novel structures, as there was not enough time to explain these adequately. A district CEP worker noted the irony, “they’d ask us to finish in two months but the community would not understand the project and this would create conflict. As a result, it would end up taking four months” (p. 524).
It is also important to go through the right channels for successful community participation. The councils bypassed existing structures of governance, including those within the new government, which meant that they bypassed local sources of legitimacy and knowledge. This led to conflict or indifference among the community members and poor sustainability of projects. In particular, the CEP’s microcredit scheme was poorly run, resulting in too many women, many of them widows, setting up roadside kiosks that cannot sell enough of anything to remain viable. A World Bank researcher concluded that only 30 per cent of the microcredit loans would be paid back as the rest of the women will not make enough money. So although the project did achieve some success, such as improving access to better quality water, its failures were more prominent and very costly. Moxham (2005) cited a World Bank Background Paper to the Timor-Leste and Development Partners in 2003, which reported that 58 cents out of every dollar spent went to overheads, mainly to prevent the CEP from being derailed due to its many problems.
Preventing similar fiascos and waste of resources would require the provision of appropriate preparation for those who need to know how to engage with communities and facilitate participation. holistic approach to training should be taken, which not only includes background research and the use of information guides, but also interactive forums and open discussions with experienced facilitators who can give practical suggestions. In addition, site visits to communities who have been involved in participatory projects would give a better understanding of how the projects have worked or failed in terms of goals achievement and sustainability (Chambers 1997 in Smith 2008).
Conclusion
In their article on community participation in development, Botes and van Rensburg (2000) concludes that involving people can take a lot of time and delay decisions. They quoted Gilbert (1987, p. 75) who wrote, “the only valid conclusion that can be drawn is one of tempered enthusiasm for the idea of community participation, and then always subject to local circumstances” (p. 56). Other writers are more critical, for example, Waisbord (2008, p. 508) said participation has become a “meaningless and bland term, a decorative piece in a system that continues to keep states, agencies, and experts in control”. The limits of the participatory approach, as described above, could have contributed to this. Nevertheless, there are very real advantages from involving community in the heart of development planning and practice, and these are unlikely to be realised in any other way. As Botes and van Rensburg (2000, p. 56) writes, “Development in the full sense of the word is not possible without appropriate community participation”. The key challenge is in how to make community participation appropriate in the midst of complexity and heterogeneity. As communities are the ones who will be most affected by development projects, they should be at the forefront of development, but more critical analysis of the limits of community-based development is needed. I agree and end with Smith’s assessment (2008, p. 358):
what is most helpful and necessary is for the most problematic elements and critiques (of people-centred projects) to be clearly defined and discussed, so that they can be utilised as opportunities for learning and improvement. Only then can the participatory approach mature as a theory and a practice and evolve into the most efficient, empowering and sustainable approach to environmental management.
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