Community-Based Sustainable Development: Consensus or Conflict?

In the 1990s 'community-based' approaches to environment and development have become de rigeur. With the environment firmly on international development agendas, and in the wake of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), there is an emerging global consensus that the implementation of what has come to be known as 'sustainable development' should be based on local-level solutions derived from community initiatives. This IDS Bulletin seeks to add to and complement an emerging set of critiques and offers some reflections on the practice of community-based sustainable development. It does so by taking to task several key, base assumptions embedded in community-based…