'Local and Community Driven Development: Moving to Scale in Theory and Practice' provides development practitioners with the historical background and the tools required to successfully scale up local and community driven development (LCDD) to the regional and national levels. LCDD gives control of development decisions and resources to communities and local governments. It involves collaboration between communities, local governments, technical agencies, and the private sector. Since the 1980s, participatory approaches have received new impetus via participatory rural appraisal, the integration of participation in sector programs, decentralization efforts of developing countries, and greater space for civil society and the private sector. This book traces the emergence of the LCDD synthesis from these various strands. 'Local and Community Driven Development' provides the theoretical underpinnings for scaling up, guidance on how to adapt the approach to the specific institutional and political settings of different countries, diagnostic tools, and step-by-step instructions to diagnose the national context, adapt policies, and expand programs. It will be a useful guide for rural and urban development practitioners, public administrators, and policy makers who wrestle daily with the problems the book addresses.

This publication contains papers and discussions arising from a series of UN Economic and Social Council meetings organised to discuss the theme of promoting an integrated approach to rural development in developing countries to achieve poverty eradication and sustainable development. The papers are arranged under six chapter headings of: i) the fundamentals of integrated development, including the millennium development goals and the role of NEPAD; ii) agricultural issues including agro-industries, land use practices, sustainable livestock production methods, smallholder agriculture and co-operatives; iii) environmental issues including rural energy development, water privatisation, forest areas and E7 public-private partnerships; iv) market access issues, including commodity markets, microcredit systems, the coffee and mining sectors; v) health and education; and vi) culture and work.

This book provides an overview of recent advances in Integrated Community-Managed Development (ICMD) as an innovative strategy for the community-based development of local institutions in order to achieve lasting poverty reduction and empowerment. The original approach presented here to improving the lives and livelihoods of the poor takes a critical stance on the failing concept of conventional community development, as it is based on the shifting paradigm of 'bottom-up' cooperation and development, where recent regional autonomy policies are enabling national services to successfully integrate with local institutions at the community level. Based on recent experiences in South-East Asia, where the implementation of an alternative approach to integrating financial, medical, educational, communication and socio-cultural services has led to increased community participation and impressive poverty reduction, the book highlights the theoretical, methodological and practical aspects of this innovative strategy. The potential offered by applying the newly developed 'ICMD formula' worldwide as a function of themes, principles and services is reflected in the book’s diverse range of contributions, written by respected researchers and practitioners in the fields of development economics and financial management.

The importance of community-based and participatory approaches to rural development in developing countries has long been emphasized. Rural people, who are economically and politically weak as individuals, can only participate in development projects w

Sustainability of rural communities is threatened by a plethora of factors including climate change and disasters which interact in an intricate manner in making rural people vulnerable and poor. This book is the output of empirical research on communities and livelihood strategies in developing countries. It reveals how rural communities are functioning and earning their livelihoods by making the best use of the resources, local/internal or external/new and the combination of the two to counteract the various challenges they face, with the ultimate goal of becoming resilient to local or global shocks and sustaining that resilience. Local governance is identified as crucial in ensuring sustainable livelihoods as it ensures healthy collaboration between communities, on the one hand and civil society and those communities, on the other hand, in promoting self-sustaining development trajectories. Similarly, the role of social capital is not ignored as it brings in community drive and a sense of purpose, direction and solidarity among community members which facilitates problem solving in periods of crises and disasters.

Despite so many determined efforts, the fight against poverty and hunger, especially in rural areas, remains a huge challenge! Given the complexity of the problems and the enormity of the task, more innovative and effective approaches are urgently needed. The key actors are those who suffer most - the rural poor themselves. It is crucial to recognize that they have their own strategies to secure their livelihoods which vary from household to household depending on numerous factors such as their socio-economic status, education and local knowledge, ethnicity, and stage in the household life cycle. At the same time, the strategies of these different groups of people are heavily influenced by and respond to the broader socio-economic, cultural, political, religious and institutional context in which they live. In many cases, the strategies of different groups are complementary and mutually beneficial while in some cases they may uncover latent conflicting interests that call for negotiation and resolution.