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Inclusive Development, an imperative for the future

Building broader partnerships for better informed development decisions

By Plateau Perspectives

March 6^th, 2020

What is inclusive development?

Inclusive development is, minimally, development that "carries along" everyone — not just a select few — toward improved or strengthened livelihoods, resilience to change, and people's sense of wellbeing. It emphasizes the social and environmental aspects of sustainable development.

At a more fundamental level, inclusive development also refers to (or it should refer to) local people's wellbeing and development as it is desired and designed by the people and communities themselves — that is, those who are 'targeted' by the so-called development entreprise — but who should, in addition to being 'recipients' of development, also be leading in the assessments, design, and implementation of development initiatives and interventions. Externally imposed, top-down models of development are neither sustainable nor fair or just, and many of the underlying causes of injustice and inequalities seen around the world actually find their roots in various forms of past and on-going colonisation as well as on-going flawed global economic systems. Rather than considering only measures of economic wealth, such as GDP, other values of wealth, prosperity and wellbeing including a healthy environment, vibrant communities and nutritious local foods must equally be acknowledged and valued.

Village meeting about local agriculture, poverty alleviation, and the management of a recently established community cooperative in the Shigatse area, Tibet Autonomous Region, China (photo credit: Gongbo Tashi)

The notion of inclusive development highlights the obscene fact that, in 2018, the cumulative wealth of only 26 people equaled the wealth of the world’s poorest 50 percent; the top 1% of earners are capturing twice as much growth as the bottom half of the global population; and furthermore, these inequalities are rising or staying extremely high nearly everywhere.

Clearly, broader integration amongst people is needed at a global scale, including deeper partnerships at multiple levels, in order to ensure a fairer access to resources and benefits derived from them. More informed decision-making processes also are necessary, to be informed at least in part through more engaged and participatory approaches including multiple stakeholders and knowledge systems.

For more insight about global wealth and inequalities, see the following graphs (below) and other information contained at https://inequality.org/facts/global-inequality/.

Wealth of the World's Poorest Shrinks Relative to Billionaires

The Global 1% Captured Twice as Much Growth has the Bottom Half

Inequality is Rising or Staying Extremely High Nearly Everywhere

The US is Much More Top-Heavy Than any Other OECD Country

Respecting rights-holders

Conversely, inclusive development both recognizes and serves the wider population — and it does this across all sectors, as well as with the explicit consideration of all 3 dimensions of sustainability: economy, society, and environment — rather than considering only the 'economics' of development (with many actual costs externalized), or simplistically considering only national level aggregated data and statistics.

Although there are still debates about whether 'development' requires 'growth' — with discussions sometimes becoming philosophical in nature, often driven by deeply held values and belief systems including issues of human rights — both theoretical work and field based research about inclusivity in development (and consequently, the spread of development outcomes) now broadly recognize the necessity not only for multi- or interdisciplinary research, but also for inclusive transdisciplinary approaches.

Multidisciplinary research aims to combine or involve several academic disciplines and/or professional specializations in the overall approach to tackling and understanding a particular topic or problem.

Moving beyond this, transdisciplinary research also seeks to include all local stakeholders in defining research objectives and strategies, as well as in 'translating' and disseminating outputs, so as to attain desired development outcomes. Such collaborations between researchers and other stakeholders is deemed as essential to understand and advance sustainability, not merely for achieving academic outputs.

Inclusive development builds on a range of development theories and approaches including pro-poor strategies, sustainable livelihoods, environmental and human rights, green economy, and also working within planetary boundaries along with other 'post-development' and mutualistic (versus utilitarian) approaches and worldviews. Furthermore, as the basic concept of inclusivity pertains to the realms of equity and justice and the 'fair sharing' of benefits (see the UN Nagoya protocol on 'access and benefit sharing' or ABS), concerns about economic neoliberalism and their manifestation in corporate developments including land grabbing are increasingly on the radar.

Genuine partnerships with the people who are most affected by proposed or already enacted changes can ensure that their voices are heard and that deliberations and ultimately that decisions are based on the best possible evidence, including traditional knowledge and time-proven customary practices.

Trans-disciplinary conceptualization of inclusive development (DOI: 10.1016/j.cosust.2017.03.004)

Moving beyond the notion of stakeholders — whereby virtually anyone could conceivably claim to "have a stake" (i.e., an interest) in a resource, place, or project — the centrality of communities is of paramount significance, and therefore the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities (or IP/LCs) must necessarily trump the interests and plans, often economic, of more distant actors in local affairs. Respecting local people's and local communities' rights is not an optional add-on.

Tibetan mothers and children at festival

Village school headmaster in Yagnob Valley

A regional assembly for 'West & Central Asia and the Caucasus' was held by the ICCA Consortium in Yerevan, Armenia in June 2019

Mountains and rivers pose considerable challenges to movement in Hunza Valley

Maternal and child health require special attention, as these are amongst the greatest development challenges in remote areas (photo credit: Kieran Dodds)

Conservation endeavours also should be inclusive

Although there are divergent views of what 'conservation' actually is, or should be — and furthermore, by and for whom 'conservation' should be undertaken — it is now increasingly recognized that just as for 'development', any conservation-oriented plan or action also should be inclusive.

On the international scene, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) is now in its 7th Operational Phase (2018-2022) and the pioneering Inclusive Conservation initiative, which aims to empower Indigenous Peoples organizations to become more effective stewards of their lands, was approved at the 57th GEF Council meeting in December 2019 — the first dedicated GEF-funded initiative focusing entirely on Indigenous Peoples with larger grants.

The ICCA Consortium recommends the following definition: "Inclusive conservation" occurs where indigenous peoples and local communities are the key actors governing, managing and conserving their own lands, waters and other gifts of nature, and, as necessary and desired, these actors may invite others to collaborate with and support them, on community-defined terms.

The ICCA Consortium's Policy Brief (see link on left) starts with an introduction to ICCAs - Territories of life, the heart and soul of any inclusive conservation system, which by definition should be determined by indigenous peoples and local communities who are caring for those territories of life. As nature is being diminished under the combined pressures of widespread habitat loss and degradation, pollution, and climate breakdown, and as indigenous peoples and communities face existential threats from largely the same processes that are overwhelming ecosystems, it is increasingly clear that supporting indigenous peoples and local communities to govern and manage their territories of life on their own terms will also benefit society at large.

Both inclusive development and conservation should be the norm within all initiatives... but, sadly, they are not yet mainstreamed in most sectors, nor amongst most audiences...

Much has yet to be done to normalize fair, equitable, transparent, and community-led development and conservation. And this, especially in an era where both sustainability and transparency — along with increased local agency — are already recognized as extremely important, and called for from multiple sources... even though in most instances not yet adequately being put into practice.

Inclusive approaches are an imperative for sustainability

Clearly there is still need to broaden partnerships, in particular to include all key stakeholders in joint reflection, research, discussion and debate, and planning for the future. More research and reflection are needed... and this, coming from multiple sources and angles... including a variety of different knowledge systems and 'ways of knowing.'

Inclusive Development, an imperative for the future

Informed decision-making, that is, making decisions based on knowledge — whether this be ecological, economic, sociocultural, political... in fact, all of these — is essential to achieve lasting, substantive, and equitable development!

Fundamentally, people's rights are at stake — and arguably, too, the rights of nature... (though this discussion should wait for another time) Human rights are not just political, they also pertain to health, education, happiness... and include the basic rights of access to the resources necessary for people to achieve development hopes and aspirations, such as access to land, water, and clean air.

In sum, it is human rights writ large that constitutes the basic premise of inclusive development.

5 ways you can build and strengthen partnerships

Broad partnerships are necessary to properly inform decision-making processes. Partnerships require both time and trust, but in addition they can be further strengthened in a range of ways. Below are 5 proven perspectives, systems-level approaches and methods/technologies that can support in these critical processes, by purposefully and pro-actively including the most significant of rights-holders, namely local people and communities and indigenous peoples.

ICCAs - Territories of life
Community conservation
Collaborative management
Citizen Science (CitSci)
EdTech & digital badges

Maasai women on a conservation project in Kenya (source: Garnett et al., 2018)

Indigenous peoples have a deep and unique connection to the lands they inhabit. This connection has persisted throughout the world, despite centuries of colonisation, displacement and suppression of their cultural identities.

What has never been appreciated is the contemporary spatial extent of Indigenous influence...

(Garnett et al., 2018)

I. ICCAs - Territories of life

Indigenous peoples are individually and collectively making enormous contributions to conservation globally, with many groups delivering significant conservation benefits through their land-management regimes developed and refined over generations.

Garnett et al. (2018) continue: "Conservation partnerships will only be successful if the rights, knowledge systems and practices of Indigenous peoples are fully acknowledged. Many Indigenous peoples have acknowledged this fact, by calling for partnerships that respect, understand and follow local processes. There is no one size that fits all – Indigenous peoples are hugely diverse."

________

The ICCA Consortium was established over a decade ago as a membership-based association with a global and highly motivated Council and Secretariat. The Consortium supports its Members through processes of 'self-strengthening' at the local level and networking, peer-support and advocacy at national, regional and international levels.

Community leader of the Qashqai nomadic pastoralist tribe, from the Zagros Mountains, Iran

A close association is often found between a specific indigenous people or local community and a specific territory, area, or body of natural resources. When [this] is combined with effective local governance and conservation of nature, we speak of an “ICCA” [...] an abbreviation for “territories and areas conserved by indigenous peoples and local communities” or “territories of life”.

(source: ICCA Consortium)

The Consortium is now undergoing a process of regionalisation, including an emerging endeavour to more comprehensively identify and document ICCAs in West and Central Asia and the Caucasus.

Conservation outcomes may be achieved either through purposeful engagement with various issues for the sake of conserving biodiversity, or this may could occur somewhat as a by-product of livelihoods and natural resource management decisions, for example through long-standing customary practices based on traditional knowledge accumulated over generations.

For example, the Yagnobi people are the last descendants of the Sogdian empire and they particularly value and wish to preserve their language. Recognizing the extraordinary Yagnob region and its people as a potential ICCA, or Territory of Life, and equally acknowledging the recent establishment of Yagnob National Park in Tajikistan, partnership is now being encouraged between the local people and the national park under a framework of shared governance and collaborative management, with significant authority to be entrusted to them to govern the park.

For more information, see page 8 in the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) Mountain Update, September 2019, or the short 5-minute video produced by Plateau Perspectives. High level dialogues are currently underway to develop the national park on the basis of sound collaborative principles together with respect and delegation of authority to the local mountain communities.

Yagnob Valley was established as Tajikistan's newest national park in May 2019, with the dual goals to protect nature along with the special cultural heritage of the Yagnobi people. This extraordinary region is a potential ICCA, or Territory of Life.

On the International Day for Biological Diversity, in May 2019, the Consortium released a 20 minute video journey through several territories of life across the world. In this short film, indigenous peoples and local community custodians will give an intimate glimpse into why their territories and areas are cradles of cultural and biological diversity and how they are seeking recognition and support.

Introduction to ICCAs - Territories of life

Group photo at the ICCA Regional Assembly for West & Central Asia and the Caucasus, held in Armenia, June 2019

II. Community conservation

While not quite as broadly oriented as conservation achieved through Territories of life (which also incorporate people's culture and deeply-held values, along with traditional livelihoods and practices), community based conservation (or community conservation) nonetheless includes all conservation work or initiatives undertaken by local communities, whether outside or inside formal protected areas such as national parks and nature reserves. The term generally refers to initiatives undertaken by communities with the specific aim to protect valued wildlife, habitats, and/or the provision of ecosystem services in their home regions.

In Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, for example, several "community conservancies" have been established in recent years, supported by Ilbirs Foundation and others, building on earlier experiences from northern Pakistan, in which community-organized hunting and ecotourism are developed for the sake of protecting the environment and simultaneously financing local community development.

Training workshop organized by Ilbirs Foundation for members of several community conservancies in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan

Further, Dr Fikret Berkes provides an excellent overview of what is at stake in his article, Community-based conservation in a globalized world: "Communities have an important role to play in biodiversity conservation... [We must now rethink] conservation by using a complexity perspective and the ability to deal with multiple objectives, use of partnerships and deliberative processes, and learning from commons research to develop diagnostic tools. Perceived this way, community-based conservation has a role to play [with] governance that starts from the ground up... [It is time to work] within a pluralistic framework rather than a blueprint approach."

III. Collaborative management

Where protected areas have already been established, one of the most common mechanisms adopted that aims to build better partnerships between government authorities and local communities is the approach known as community co-management. Other management mechanisms also exist, such as government operated reserves and private parks, however the more collaborative approaches hold significant potential to simultaneously address the needs and interests of multiple stakeholders.

In the Sanjiangyuan region of the Tibetan plateau — an enormous region encompassing an area larger than Germany — the first trials of such co-management approaches were developed and supported by Plateau Perspectives under the "Yicun Yidian" project, which can translate roughly (from Chinese) as "every village serving as a conservation station." The focus of early collaborative conservation work was monitoring and protection of snow leopard, Panthera uncia.

Beyond traditional nomadic pastoral practices that have de facto allowed conservation of the land, the first community protected areas were established in 1998; following this, Sanjiangyuan nature reserve was established in 2000; and most recently, part of the Sanjiangyuan region is now being established as China's first national park, a project that will be formally launched later in 2020.

The first 18 years of work undertaken by Plateau Perspectives' staff in the Sanjiangyuan region, until 2018, are documented in a film produced and aired by Hong Kong Satellite Television (see below). (Also see the peer-reviewed article, Environmental Conservation in the Tibetan Plateau region).

Snow leopard 'caught on camera' by Plateau Perspectives and Tibetan community partners working together on the trial co-management "Yicun Yidian" project with the Sanjiangyuan National Nature Reserve

Tibetan girl and lamb, near the source of the Yangtze River in the heart of the Tibetan Plateau

Kazakh nomad in the Altai mountains, with ancient bulbul (stone man) in foreground

Nomads herding their yak, sheep and goats on the Tibetan Plateau in winter (photo credit: Marc Foggin / Plateau Perspectives)

Inaugural meeting of trial co-management project known as "Yicun Yidian" (c. 2006) with Sanjiangyuan National Nature Reserve and community and nature reserve partners

IV. Citizen Science (CitSci)

The world is facing unprecedented social, environmental and economic challenges that will require policymakers, business, scientists and citizens to open up to one another and find new ways of collaborating. In our digital age, we are reinventing the way knowledge is produced, distributed and acted upon. [An] approach based on citizen science will be part of this new relationship between science and society.

(source: Hecker et al., 2018)

Citizen science is the practice of public participation and collaboration in scientific research — aiming to increase scientific knowledge as well as to widen and enhance people's participation, empowerment, and sense of ownership and belonging in both processes and results derived from systematic enquiry.

Through citizen science, people give of their time and energy, on a voluntary basis, and contribute to monitoring and sometimes also to analysis and assessment of results derived from the collected data. The range of research questions is as wide as people's imagination, and emerging digital tools are enabling ever more research subjects and novel approaches.

A dedicated Citizen Science Association has recently been founded; government agencies are seeking to accelerate innovation through greater public participation; annual bird counts are being organized; long-term environmental change and unusual occurrences in nature are being observed/documented in ways that are increasingly inclusive of traditional ecological knowledge; and disaster risks reduction initiatives are being mapped globally...

A special category is "Extreme Citizen Science," defined as a situated, bottom-up practice of citizen science that takes into account local needs, practices and culture and works with broad networks of people to design and build new devices and knowledge creation processes that can transform the world.

Further understanding of evolving definitions and typologies in Citizen Science also can help scientists and volunteers alike to better situate their projects, and to clarify their vision of where they wish to go.

The Lapis Guides platform and field guides app was created to serve in an infinite number of ways — including surveys and scientific studies focused on wildlife and biodiversity, the spread of invasive species, plant phenologies, indicators of climate change, cultural heritage, and much more besides.

Developed by Amadeus DeKastle and Marc Foggin, this app will most commonly be used as a digital field guide, each user choosing which specific in-app guides to download. The associated platform can be accessed online and allows users to create their own new field guides according to personal interests. Furthermore, collected data can be downloaded and imported into other software for analysis.

Sample projects include the following:

Lapis Guides is a unique tool that allows organisations and researchers to create interactive field guides with photographs, descriptions and maps that can be used by specialists and non-specialists alike – the latter serving as Citizen Scientists.

A large cluster of petroglyphs have been discovered in the Tianshan Mountains in Central Asia at over 5000 m asl. This extraordinary find has been carefully documented by Amadeus DeKastle with the Lapis Guides app that he and Marc Foggin co-created. Altogether, 2,986 engravings on 725 rocks have been assessed, described, and dated from between the Bronze and Iron Ages and the more recent Turkic Medieval and Kyrgyz Ages. With archaeologist and co-author Luc Hermann, these findings are now published in the International Newsletter of Rock Art (INORA, 86:17-25).

Hermann, L., DeKastle, A., and Foggin, M. (2020). The Rock Art of the Karakol Region (Tchouï and Naryn Oblast) in Kyrgyzstan. International Newsletter On Rock Art (INORA), 86: 17-25.

All locations and photographs were collected with Lapis Guides.

See http://www.marcfoggin.com/rockart/.

V. EdTech & digital badges

A final area worth mentioning because of its enormous potential to significantly enhance inclusivity in realms of development and conservation is Educational Technology, or EdTech. When combined with smartphones and ever-expanding connectivity, EdTech shows much promise even for remote, hard-to-access mountain regions.

EdTech broadly refers to the concurrent use of physical hardware, software and educational theories to facilitate learning and ultimately improve performance (that is, learning outcomes) with technological processes and resources. Several current trends in EdTech are noted, including but not limited to enhanced access to STEM materials, 'flipped learning', game-based curricula, virtual reality, big data analysis, and use of social media.

The Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA)-supported development research project "Adaptive governance of mountain ecosystem services for poverty alleviation enabled by environmental virtual observatories" (for short, Mountain EVO) is a fine example of how new and rapidly developing technologies can be leveraged to strengthen and empower local stakeholders through the process of enabling more systematic, widespread environmental monitoring.

Led by researchers at Imperial College London and other partners, including collaborators at the Mountain Society Research Institute in Kyrgyzstan, this innovative ESPA project with field work in four countries around the world resulted in publication of a series of policy briefs, or Insights.

New technologies such as smartphones and semi-automatic weather stations may provide a boost to agricultural outputs and livelihoods by enhancing the availability of local data, but only if newly acquired [...] information is made readily accessible to the intended public in meaningful, accessible ways.

(source: ESPA - Mountain EVO)

Finally, the use of widely available smartphones (even with limited Internet connectivity) together with digital badges to document people's achievements can help ‘close the gap’ in the educational entreprise. Digital badging is the use of micro-credentials to both motivate learners and provide them with credentials that may be transferred to educational programs, or used as proof of skills.

Specifically, this use of micro-credentials encourages learners to progress through a series of small, culturally-relevant educational packages that address personal educational goals, motivating them and validating their achievements. It is assumed, ultimately, that this approach can greatly enhance overall levels of attainment of development goals such as the Global Goal (or SDG) #4, Quality Education, which aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.”

The use of digital badges is currently being reviewed and developed for application to training progammes in the Tianshan mountains, in particular for accreditation and certification of the trainings and participation in events organized by Horseback Planet Society — see the video Choose Ecotourism, Discover Kyrgyzstan! They also are being considered in context of establishing a new "Kyrgyzstan Ecotourism Association" in the coming months.

Theoretical frameworks for digital badges and their application in the sociocultural contexts of Central Asia are discussed elsewhere — a strongly recommended read!

Source: Badging for Sustainable Development: Applying EdTech Micro-Credentials for Advancing SDGs amongst Mountain and Pastoralist Societies

Complex mountain social-ecological system in the Pamirs mountains in Gorno-Badakhshan, Tajikistan (photo credit: Matthew Emslie-Smith)

Kham Tibetan herder whose flexible, adaptive approach led him to be an early adopter of emerging digital technology on the Tibetan plateau, in Qinghai, China

Kazakh herder undertaking seasonal migration to traditional summer pastures in the Altai Mountains in Xinjiang, China, within Liangheyuan Nature Reserve

In closing...

Inclusive development is not optional, it is an imperative. A just and equitable future depends on broadening partnerships, on having the right people 'at the table' so to speak, as well as being suitably informed — yet informed not only about 'objective facts' (cf. environmental monitoring) but, more so, we also must become more informed about people's hopes and dreams, their perceived needs, as well as their aspirations for the future. This can be achieved in various ways; the five examples presented here for broadening and strengthening partnerships — and ultimately for ensuring that development (and conservation) becomes more inclusive, both in outlook and in practice — are but starting points. Yet, they also provide hope that greater inclusivity can in fact be achieved, and encourage us to look for novel tools, technologies and theories that can inspire and provide impetus for change, for good!

To cite: Foggin, J. M. 2020. Inclusive Development, An Imperative for the Future: Building broader partnerships for better informed development decisions. Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic: Plateau Perspectives. https://stories.plateauperspectives.org/inclusive-development

Footnotes

Special thanks to Tashi Dorje, Gongbo Tashi, Jigme Rabden, Anvar Buzurukov, Abduvohid Safarov, Zairbek Kubanychbekov, Randal Gwin, Marion Foggin, and Holly Jonas — for many stimulating exchanges!

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FootNotes

Special thanks to Tashi Dorje, Gongbo Tashi, Jigme Rabden, Anvar Buzurukov, Abduvohid Safarov, Zairbek Kubanychbekov, Randal Gwin, Marion Foggin, and Holly Jonas — for many stimulating exchanges!