All of the policies and activities that have been described so
far were implemented within a context in which the nation state
and centralized government were taken as given. Whether they were
capitalist or socialist was in this sense irrelevant. They represented
the only available paradigm. However, during the 1980s, the growing
supremacy of free market-based capitalism, the beginnings of the
global economy, and the failure in many countries of the centralist-socialist
paradigm to achieve any marked degree of either social or economic
equity, combined to produce a new hybrid that is still being formed.
This is the decentralized free market state that first began to
emerge in the so-called "informal" or "grey" sectors of national
economies all over the world, either as overly regulated and therefore
taxed citizens opted out of the formal economy, or those who were
already excluded such as the urban poor conducted their own affairs.
Significantly, this emerging global paradigm is identical in
nature to the informal sector in urban slums and squatter settlements
in Asia that has just been described. Moreover, the initial response
of governments anywhere in the world has always been negative.
However, sufficient evidence from formal economics in favour of
local and even individual initiative was easy to muster in developed
countries. As this accumulated and gained acceptance, it combined
with social ideals of persuasion and accommodation as opposed
to authoritarian command and control that were a relic of the
era of disillusion, to produce what is currently called the "enabling"
paradigm.
Evidence of this transition has been visible around the world
for some time. One can include, for instance, the economic reforms
in China led by Deng Xiao Peng, the elections of Ronald Reagan
and Margaret Thatcher and the break-up of the Soviet Union. Internationally,
lending and monetary agencies like the World Bank (IBRD) and the
International Monetary Fund have changed their policies and have
forced many governments to tighten belts and remove subsidies,
in effect requiring their devolution as preconditions for further
economic assistance.
The rise of free, deregulated markets as the orthodoxy in development
has also led to a rethinking of the role of the individual and
the government in society. Whereas formerly the government was
regarded as the leader, provider and sustainer, essentially the
patriarch of society, the new roles assigned to it are primarily
those of a facilitator and enabler, essentially a benevolent uncle
who does not have the responsibility to provide or sustain. But
although its leadership role has been battered, it still remains.
Thus, a transformed government is supposed to foster a regeneration
in society of individual freedoms and responsibilities. In this
view, the individual or groups of individuals and private sector
firms are responsible for their own well-being, with the government
creating an environment that enables them to be so.
In this region, this view is reinforced by critical reviews of
government economic and social policies which have confirmed the
inability of governments to meet the development challenge alone.
The success of projects like the Orangi Pilot Project, Grameen
Bank and SEWA seem to indicate that the poor could provide for
their own needs through their own resources without government
assistance and in spite of the constraints imposed by unsuitable
government regulations and policies.
Another aspect of the new paradigm is that, in contrast to spectacular
government failures in meeting the needs of the poor, a growing
realization has emerged, even among government officials and politicians,
that community participation is essential to poverty alleviation.
In certain countries, participatory programmes such as the Kampung
Improvement Programme in Indonesia, the land-sharing approach
in Thailand and the Million Houses Programme in Sri Lanka showed
the advantages of participatory approaches even in government-initiated
programmes.
In this view, governments which had failed to deliver are supposed
to withdraw from the economic and social responsibilities they
had assumed; private sector firms which had long endured government
regulations have increasingly become subject to market forces;
and the NGO sector which had long been mistrusted by government
and had responded in kind are finding a much fuller role. As these
organizations are given trusted places in society, there is a
growing realization among them that partnerships with governments
are required if their successes are to be multiplied and diffused.
The end of the cold war is another instance of the same process
and has contributed considerably to the democratization of governments
in Asia and the Pacific. In the new orthodoxy of deregulation
and free market reforms, democratization and individual freedoms
are to play a vital role in freeing the creative energies of society.
Yet another impact of the market-oriented economic orthodoxy is
greater attention to institutional issues, particularly the efficient
management of urban areas, where much of the industrial and commercial
activity takes place.
4.1 Influence of international
agencies and donors
Within this still fluid context, the changes in approach to the
provision and management of urban land and infrastructure in the
region, which is also strongly reflected in approaches to the
production of housing that is discussed in greater detail below,
were strongly influenced by international pressure. This was clearly
dominated by the IBRD and to a lesser extent the Asian Development
Bank (ADB), whose urban lending policies by and large paralleled
those of the global bank. At a different level and with very different
goals, the UNICEF urban basic services programme has also had
considerable impact. The bilateral agencies have played an important
role, though their style of operation has tended to be more that
of supporting recipient government policies within the framework
of the donor governments' aid priorities than in setting out to
shape them.
Changes in IBRD policy since its first urban interventions in
the mid-1970s may be characterized by a progression of preoccupations,
starting with sectoral projects that were based on the provision
of "basic needs" such as shelter and transport. Examples include
the Indonesian and Philippines series of urban development projects
and the Thailand sites and services projects. This was followed
by "integrated urban projects" that set out to promote greater
efficiency and equity in the provision and distribution of basic
needs. For instance, the Madras urban development projects that,
in addition to financing the vast sites and services and slum
improvement projects in the city, also lent for the purchase of
buses; the construction of terminals and depots; industrial parks
for small-scale and cottage industries; and the rehabilitation
of trunk water and sanitation systems. The third leg in this progression
was the extension of the multi-sectoral approach of integrated
urban projects beyond the confines of individual cities to regional
development studies and projects such as that undertaken for the
Guangju region of the Republic of Korea.
Studies such as this led to a series of national urban development
policy and strategy studies such as those undertaken for Pakistan
(1983), Indonesia (1985), Malaysia (1986) and Thailand (1991),
which focused not only upon the need for infrastructure investment,
but more upon fiscal and other national and local resource management
measures that could steer and stimulate private sector investment
in urban development.
Thus, by the late 1980s, emphasis had moved strongly away from
the funding of basic needs infrastructure projects and on to the
wider issues of effective urban management, the stimulation of
urban economic development and structural adjustment. This appeared
to be a return to the 1960s' faith in "trickle-down". However,
the difference with 30 years ago is that there is now a better,
though far from perfect, understanding of how urban economies
work. This includes the relationship between formal and informal
networks; the areas where public intervention is required
such as in the land and finance markets for low-income housing
and enterprise development; the areas where it is not effective
such as in the management of local-level construction and the
delivery of some urban services; what social safety nets exist
and where welfare support is needed; and so on. There is also
a better understanding of the importance of good governance, accountability
and transparency of local democratic processes, both at the level
of traditional local government and within neighbourhoods and
communities.
For its part, the UNICEF Urban Basic Services (UBS) programme
has made an extremely important and seemingly sustainable impact
at the level of neighbourhoods and communities. It has stayed
with the "basic needs" concept of local development that it entered
through its concern for the plight of children and their mothers
in the growing slums and shanties of the developing countries.
To this it has added the essential importance not only of the
participation of women, but of democratic community-level control
of the decision-making processes in local development. It also
worked with and through established local government structures.
UBS identifies basic needs as environmental health (safe water
and waste disposal); access to primary health care; basic literacy
and access to educational opportunities for both women and children;
access to family planning; and access to income-earning opportunities.
By implication and in practice, this range of concerns embraced
the improvement of housing and urban infrastructure and services
for low-income communities at large.
In this way, the UBS programmes provided the foundation and entry
point for other important initiatives. For instance, the British
Government's sustained slum improvement programme in India, which
over the last 10 years has granted some US$150 million in five
major cities, was built upon the UNICEF UBS programme in Hyderabad
that started in 1981. The Sri Lanka Million Houses Programme both
used and helped to develop the UNICEF UBS community-based managerial
infrastructure to the mutual and coordinated benefit of both programmes.
Thus, UNICEF, through UBS, has perhaps more than any other international
agency provided the practical basis and intellectual stimulation
for the new approaches to public sector support to urban housing
production by the lowest income groups.
4.2 Mainstreaming the "enabling"
paradigm
Before examining the implications of implementing a support-based
"enabling" strategy for housing, it is important to clarify the
arguments and principles that underlie the approach. These have
clearly grown out of the sequence of experiences described above
but they also borrow from and are part of the wider debates around
"good government" and transparency, as well as deregulation, decentralization
and the devolution of responsibility and authority. They are directly
associated with programmes that seek greater efficiency and effectiveness
in the use of resources through the structural adjustment of government
administration. And they build upon both the intellectual and
the professional understanding of the mechanisms by which urban
low-income households and communities house themselves that was
outlined in the preceding section.
The case for the devolution of authority in the production and
management of housing to its users, and the provision of appropriate
supports that will enable them to exercise that authority effectively,
is made through three lines of argument. These are: a) the managerial
and political case; b) the social and developmental case; and
c) the economic case. Each is outlined below.
4.2.1 The managerial/political
case
This may be summarized by the dictum "if you can't beat them,
join them". That is, there is no way that a developing country
government can provide adequate subsidized housing for all those
families which, through poverty, cannot gain access to the formal
private sector housing market. It has been amply demonstrated
over the last 30 years that, with the exception of Hong Kong and
Singapore, both of which "graduated" from developing country status
in the 1970s, no third world government has the financial, professional
or technical resources to take on such a task. It is therefore
politically imprudent for governments to continue to proclaim
plans to provide housing for the lower income groups. At best,
such declarations of intent can only be regarded as a gesture
that meets the needs of a fraction of the target group. At worst,
they are seen as arbitrary programmes for the benefit of a selection
of the politically favoured, as was the case with the Sri Lankan
Electoral Housing Programme of 1978-1982, the PPP housing programme
in Pakistan and BLISS in the Philippines in the 1980s.
However, governments cannot afford to abandon the poor who constitute
the largest section of their constituents and a potential, if
not actual, body of political support. Therefore, alternative
strategies must be devised that have a high enough profile to
be politically exploitable as well as being sufficiently effective
and sustainable to attract international recognition and aid.
An "enabling" strategy for housing that provides responsive and
appropriate supports to the hitherto unaided energies and efforts
of low-income households and communities provides such a vehicle.
This has been demonstrated by, for example, the United National
Party administration's second housing policy in Sri Lanka (the
Million Houses Programme).
In summary, by promoting and participating in the private and
informal settlement process, instead of making futile attempts
to control it, governments use the limited resources available
to them for the benefit of many more people. In doing so, the
settlement processes that are already in progress and cannot be
stopped become much more efficient and effective as does government
influence over them.
4.2.2 The social/developmental
case
The thrust of this argument can be summarized in a progression
of six observations:
The production and management of housing
is a developmental process through which individuals, families
and communities can express their identities and advance their
status and security.
Because of the extent to which the housing
of an urban family is dependent upon the decisions and actions
of its neighbours (for instance, in securing <$&no. 1>boundaries
and access ways), it is a collective process.
With appropriate managerial support,
collective action can be converted into a process of community
decision-making and responsibility for the wider issues of the
planning and maintenance of residential areas.
This process becomes a sustainable catalyst
for the introduction of other aspects and programmes of community
development such as health, education, enterprise development
and income generation.
With well supported leadership, responsible
communities can thus take on many of the functions traditionally
assigned to, but rarely exercised by, local government such
as the administration of development controls, maintenance of
public utilities and the collection of user charges and mortgage
repayments.
Stable autonomous communities are the
starting-point for transforming slums and shanties into recognized
urban neighbourhoods that do not represent a social or environmental
threat to the city, and that no longer consume disproportionate
welfare resources. Indeed, they may eventually contribute to
revenue through taxes and service charges.
The basis of this set of observations is that the production
and management of housing and the maintenance of the domestic
environment is a social process. Therefore, to the extent that
it is neither static nor confined by tradition, it is a development
activity. As has already been mentioned, the process of housing
as a set of activities has become eclipsed in the public domain
by the production of houses as purely physical objects. And whilst
it cannot be denied that it is difficult to make a home without
a house, four walls and a roof do not necessarily make a home.
The difference between mere shelter and a home, or a housing estate
and a neighbourhood, is to a great extent determined by the degree
of involvement, responsibility and control that occupants and
users have over their immediate surroundings.
In all examples of successful community-based housing and local
environmental development projects, women play a pivotal role
that is invariably of greater significance than that of men. Women
have a greater stake in the quality of the domestic environment
than men. Not only are they traditionally responsible for the
maintenance and management of the home and the children that they
wean and bring up, but also, in low-income communities, they have
a major responsibility that is often the only one for household
income. In the absence of alternative care for children, incomes
have to be earned in or close to the dwellings. Therefore, with
careful gender planning, support-based "enabling" programmes for
housing can be used as vehicles for the greater integration of
women in the economic and managerial structure of low-income communities,
even in societies that traditionally discriminate against the
participation of women in public and economic activities.
Indeed, the introduction and acceptance of such radical changes
as local decision-making in environmental management and development,
open many urban low-income communities to other social and cultural
changes. The opportunity to exploit this for the social and economic
development of the city as a whole is at the heart of "enabling".
4.2.3 The economic case
The economic argument for devolution of responsibility in the
production, maintenance and management of housing rests in nothing
more mysterious than the basic principles of economic efficiency
in the match between supply and demand. The closer the relationship
between the producer and consumer of housing, the more efficient
will be its production and the more effective its product.
Underlying the economic argument for "enablement" is the perception
that it is unreasonable to presume that all low-income households,
struggling to make a living on insecure and often wildly fluctuating
incomes, have identical priorities for investment in housing.
Even the most cursory observation in autonomous low-income settlements
reveals that house building is a continuous stop-start process
that may go on for many years, even decades. The construction,
extension and improvement of dwellings not only reflects changes
in household size and composition but also in family fortunes.
For most low-income households, building happens sporadically
and often only after long inactive periods during which materials
and savings have been accumulated in preparation for the construction
of the next room. People only improve their houses when business
is good or a run of sustained employment produces a surplus of
income over the cost of food and other essentials. Only households
themselves can rank expenditure on housing over the other calls
on their scarce resources. Only householders can decide upon the
quality of construction or level of servicing for which they are
prepared to pay.
The discussion of the previous paragraph argues that decisions
concerning the design, construction and management of a dwelling
can only be effective if they are made by the household itself.
In this instance, the household becomes the most effective level
of decision-making. Where such decisions are made by a national
or municipal housing authority, as is often the case, they must,
by the logic of the argument, be ineffective. They are made at
too great a distance to be economically efficient. By the same
token, the most effective point at which to make decisions concerning
the character, extent and management of neighbourhood facilities
and amenities is the user community itself. The most effective
level of decision-making may thus be defined as the smallest social,
administrative or political group (household, neighbourhood community,
ward, municipality) that can economically support or claim the
exclusive use of a good or service.
It must be stressed that this concept relates to authority and
control over resources and actions. It does not mean that those
at the most effective level of decision-making are necessarily
the most effective in implementing those decisions. Thus, it does
not mean that houses must be built by their occupants using their
own labour. It does mean, however, that the occupants have authority
over whoever does so on their behalf. Similarly, it does not mean
that community facilities must be maintained using voluntary community
labour. But it does mean that the management, including financial
management, of neighbourhood assets is most effective when it
rests with the users.
However, while recognizing the intellectual logic of devolution
of decision-making to the most effective level, it must also be
recognized that few low-income households, community groups and
small local authorities have the capacity responsibly to take
such decisions. They rarely have either the technical knowledge
to evaluate the costs and benefits of alternatives, or the managerial
skills and experience to implement them. Hence the need for a
system of "enabling" that ensures that the most effective level
can capitalize on its inherent advantage through access to adequate
information and skills
4.2.4 Vehicles of support
In understanding the nature of enablement and who needs support
and who should provide it, it is important to recognize a three-part
model of the actors involved in the production, maintenance and
management of housing. The three parts are the public sector,
private sector, and community sector. The last of these, also
often referred to as the popular sector, voluntary sector or third
sector, has only recently been widely accepted as distinct from
the private (commercial) sector. Indeed, it is still sometimes
referred to as only a subcategory (not for profit) of the private
sector in the usual twofold public/private sector model of the
economy and administration. However, the motivations and styles
of operation of the private commercial sector and the community
sector are fundamentally different, as are their support requirements
and their abilities to provide it.
In addition to distinguishing between the three sectors, it is
also important to recognize their subdivisions into:
the public sector: central government
and local government;
the private sector: formal sector and
informal sector;
the community sector: non-governmental
organizations and community-based organizations.
The characteristics and capacities of each of these subsectors
in relation to their needs for support in the production, maintenance
and management of housing and their ability to provide it obviously
vary from country to country. Nevertheless, it is still useful
to offer a few generalities about them to develop a better understanding
of the limits and potentials for change in their roles.
The public sector operates through processes of legal regulation
and administrative allocation. By tradition, it does not compete
commercially with the private sector, though it may manage monopolistic
enterprises for the supply of services.
Central government, which here includes subnational state or
regional administrations in large federal countries such as India
and China, embraces central ministries and departments, public
corporations and parastatal enterprises, and a variety of special
purpose agencies and regulatory bodies. It is potentially the
principal vehicle to provide "enabling" support to actors in all
the other subsectors. Its legislative and regulatory powers give
it unique control over what John Turner has termed the elements
of housing, namely access to democratic legislation; trunk infrastructure;
land and finance markets; and, to some extent, the distribution
of professional and technical resources.
Local, district and municipal government generally has similar
constitutional powers within its area of jurisdiction. It can
raise revenue locally, generally through property taxes and/or
trading licences. Its principal responsibilities are the maintenance
and distribution of local infrastructure and the administration
of centrally supplied services. Through these mechanisms, local
government is also a vehicle for the provision of support to lower
levels of authority in the housing production process. However,
in many parts of the region, local governments do not have the
capacity to discharge their current functions, let alone to adjust
to a new role of "enabling" others. As pointed out earlier, because
local authorities have not been able to keep pace with the increased
demands made upon them, they have in many countries been abandoned
and allowed to deteriorate to the extent that they themselves
need "enabling" support, not only from central government but
also from the private sector through such processes as deregulation
and administrative structural adjustment.
This aspect is of crucial importance to the smooth, effective
functioning of Asian cities. The defeat and retreat of national
governments and the ascendancy of market economies and participatory
approaches have also resulted in rethinking the role of local
governments, which should be more aware and responsive to the
needs and aspirations of citizens if they are to tap into community
resources. Consequently, they need to be strengthened and given
more executive and financial power. In India, Nepal, the Philippines
and Sri Lanka, the government has passed either laws or constitutional
amendments that provide local governments with greater autonomy
and power. However, even in these countries, developing the capacities
of local governments to manage cities effectively has not been
undertaken. Their staff are still being trained in conventional
methodologies and are consequently unable to understand or undertake
policies which seek to empower the urban poor. While devolution
of power to the local level and strengthening of local governments
is often discussed, it has yet to materialize in most countries
of the region.
The private sector has a single overriding characteristic, namely
profit. Private enterprise will only enter the housing market
if it perceives it to provide a higher return or/and a lower risk
than alternative investments. Thus, crudely, the only supports
that can attract greater private sector investment in low-income
housing are financial guarantees.
The formal private sector embraces recognized, registered and
taxpaying enterprises ranging from large transnational corporations
and investment banks to small developers, building firms and service
companies. There are a variety of financial, legislative and managerial
supports and incentives that can make the building materials and
housing production processes attractive to smaller enterprises
in particular. Alternative approaches to the establishment and
management of mortgage banks and the setting up of formal guarantee
funds provide examples of the sorts of support that enable the
banking sector to reach further down the scale into the low-income
housing market. "Enabling" legislation that allows and encourages
partnerships between private companies and public sector agencies
for the delivery of services and the management and maintenance
of infrastructure is another example of the sorts of support that
can improve both the extent and effectiveness of the private sector
in areas that are traditionally the responsibility of local government.
Informal sector enterprises operate with the same profit motives
as those described above except that the informal sector, by definition,
is not registered, taxpaying and regulated. This enables informal
businesses to operate with considerably lower overheads and much
greater flexibility than is possible for their regulated formal
sector counterparts. Thus, in many countries they play an important
role in all sections of the economy including the production and
maintenance of housing and domestic infrastructure and services.
Informal sector enterprises are often able to reach considerably
lower down the income scale of the housing market than are registered,
regulated companies, despite being characterized by a very low
level of managerial efficiency, under capitalization, low levels
of technical competence and virtually no quality control. Thus,
appropriate training and managerial and capital assistance can
have a substantial impact. However, it is often difficult for
Governments and international NGOs to provide such support to
businesses which are officially illegal. To legalize them would
bring them into the formal sector, thereby forfeiting the advantages
that made them effective in the first place.
The community sector operates on criteria of voluntary association,
sharing costs and benefits within self-defined collective interest
groups. They have a great capacity for mobilizing enthusiasm and
creativity and can thus operate with lower overheads and more
accurately targeted programmes than can the public sector, and
at lower cost than the profit-seeking private sector.
Non-governmental organizations here fall into two distinct categories:
international NGOs and local NGOs. The first embraces a range
from the big international relief organizations with multimillion
dollar budgets to smaller first world NGOs dedicated to raising
funds for individual households and community groups. Many have
direct links to local NGOs or "field" branches of their own organizations
through which they channel funds and monitor their use. Local
NGOs differ from international NGOs in that they are involved
as pressure groups and research and advisory bodies that directly
support community-based organizations and individual households.
As their name suggests, they generally operate at a national or
local level. However, international federations of NGOs such as
Habitat International Coalition which operates globally, and the
Asian Coalition for Housing Rights, which operates continentally,
belong more to this category than to that of the international
NGOs which are characterized principally as funding bodies. Both
categories of NGOs are net providers of support rather than receivers.
The majority of their support goes to, or through, community-
based groups.
Community-based organizations are the smallest and most local
of groupings above that of the household. Where they exist, they
directly represent the users of public space, services and amenities
at the level of the neighbourhood. They are net receivers of "enabling"
support.
The arguments presented in the preceding paragraphs for the withdrawal
of government from the design and construction of dwellings do
not imply the abandonment of all government responsibility for
low-income housing. Indeed, the reverse is the case. The support
role of government in an "enabling" shelter strategy is often
considerably more complex and exacting than when building houses,
providing serviced sites or improving infrastructure in slums
and squatter settlements. It requires fundamental and innovative
changes in approach in four broad categories of support for the
production, maintenance and management of low-income housing.
These are:
suitable and affordable land;
affordable and manageable finance;
environmentally sound infrastructure
and sustainable services;
technical and managerial assistance.
An examination of this new role, including the processes by which
support can be provided, how and by whom, in the papers that follow
which draw upon the wealth of experience that exists in the region
and upon the ideas and hopes of many thinker-activists. They examine
the roles, both actual and potential, of the international, public,
private and community sectors and argue the case for a much more
open, equitable, decentralized approach that has been built up
by the experiences outlined in the preceding pages. They also
draw attention to the actual and potential obstacles and constraints
to improving the processes of living in Asian cities.
It would be inappropriate, however, to close this paper without
drawing attention to the possible downside of the current transition
to the emerging paradigm of decentralized enabling government.
Because its driving force is precisely informal sector activity
that has extrapolated itself into formal free markets, and because
this loosening of controls over the formal private sector is occurring
at the same time as globalization of the economy, national governments
are increasingly losing control over their economies and legislation.
This is particularly so in relation to trade, labour and finance
but the new freedoms, if that is what they are, are now ramifying
into other areas of society as well such that developing country
governments are now under increasing pressure to bring their social
and even environmental norms into conformity with internationally
acceptable standards. For example, pressure is already being applied
to some countries to strengthen the enforcement of laws against
child and prison labour. But this is happening not primarily out
of concern for their well-being, but because goods manufactured
by such labour are much cheaper and consequently more competitive.
These developments are, somewhat ironically considering their
origin, potentially ominous for the urban poor of this region.
For example, the money markets of New York, Tokyo and London now
impact on all economies, including those of developing countries.
Thus, with global integration, recessions in the world's major
markets such as the United States, Europe and Japan could have
a greater impact on the economies of the developing countries.
These same trends also mean that while more people are investing
in their economies, they have delegated their control over their
investments to a small number of fund managers, who today may
even be based in other countries. Deregulation would force hitherto
protected industries to compete with multinationals, which have
far greater technological and financial capacities to undercut
local competitors in order to gain a greater share of a national
market. The analogy could be the disappearance of neighbourhood
grocery stores with the advent of suburban supermarkets. This
in at least the short to medium term, would result in considerable
dislocations in local labour markets. In China, for example, conservative
estimates suggest that at least ten per cent of the state sector
workforce, 400,000 people, would have to be laid off in order
to make loss- making enterprises profitable again.
Coupled with this transformation is the advent of the information
age. While it has the potential to considerably enrich those who
have access to it, it also threatens to marginalize those who
do not. On the positive side, it may also be one of the most powerful
forces for democracy.
Another risk with the loss of power of the nation state is that
ethnic and communal animosities will become stronger and will
lead to violence. This has already happened among the republics
of the former Soviet Union, as well as in Pakistan and India,
where with the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and the loss of a
central focus, communal and ethnic violence is on the increase.
Thus, people-based development may also lead, again ironically,
to increasing social intolerance and intolerance towards the views
and rights of the minority.
Whatever lies ahead, the lessons of the past 30 years show that
this brave new world must include a rethinking of development
strategies for the poor. These strategies must be based and build
upon prevailing indigenous processes and cultures in their respective
countries. Thus, local, rather than Eurocentric, solutions must
be found to cope with and exploit the opportunities provided by
the changing global environment. The following papers contribute
towards this goal.
