By Nicholas Metherall

There is a small island called Solor in Indonesia which lies in the Savu Ocean near the intersection between Asia and the Pacific. The island’s population is largely dependent on the agricultural sector. Unfortunately, the island is incredibly arid, making it difficult to find fertile land. This leaves Solor’s rural communities particularly vulnerable to changing rain patterns and crop-destroying winds.

2014 is the last year before the expiry of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); it also happens to be the year of Small Island Developing States (SIDs). As part of an Honours research thesis at La Trobe University, and surveys for a Strategic Planning and Action to Strengthen Climate Resilience of Rural Communities (SPARC) program, I spent several months living in villages on Solor Island. I spoke with farmers, fishing collectives, health clinic workers, women’s craft collectives, and other local community groups to learn about their vision for the next fifteen years.

Leaders of a small forestry group in one of the villages shared a story about their experience in climate change mitigation and adaptation:

“Forest helps the land retain water, it also provides our community with an additional source of income… In the past we would sometimes receive help from outside of the village [government and NGOs] for our forestry program. But the tree planting programs have had a high rate of failure. Those outside programs which don’t listen to us, only bring seeds for trees. But because of the strong dry winds and low rainfall, these [seedlings] often die before they have the chance to grow. But there are some other programs which do listen to us. We tell them to bring not just seeds but also more resilient young trees [saplings]. Now we have planted more than 40, 000 trees…”

Looking back fourteen years ago, a group of mostly UN experts went into a proverbial windowless committee room and wrote the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). For a process with such significant global implications, it was a surprisingly exclusive and closed approach; the opportunity for consultation with key groups and stakeholders was very limited. This was particularly true for local community groups who, despite being the most likely targets of development programs, were the most marginalised from the agenda-setting process.

As a result, despite their accomplishments, the MDGs are often criticised for being imbalanced: overly donor-oriented, and without a foundation of voice and ownership among their intended beneficiaries.

Before deciding on the post-2015 agenda, world leaders need to listen to these voices and engage with a wider range of stakeholders and local communities. A truly effective post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Framework will need to contemplate the role of popular participation from local communities.

Participation and consultative processes should be encouraged throughout the many processes and levels of development, and by involving traditionally marginalised groups and community-based organisations (CBOs). Reinforcing inclusivity allows events ranging from high-level talks at an international level to participatory focus group discussions at a village level to benefit from the insights of local voices.

Local people have a better understanding of their context, and have unique insights into how their lives and livelihoods can be improved; they should be involved as active agents and partners of development, rather than as passive recipients.

Back on the Melanesian island, Yohannes, a rural community member, shared his experiences of large development programs. He said that while he appreciates the public service assistance that has been delivered by these nationwide interventions (to meet the MDGs) in the past, in the long run, he is concerned that such programs will leave behind a “culture of dependence.”

Concerns like these are not uncommon in the village and highlight the dangers of exclusionary, non-participatory processes. These concerns also raise questions about what exactly it is that locals really value and benefit from. Community members appreciate not only what is being delivered through a development intervention, but how it is being delivered and by whom.

Exclusionary, top-down approaches to development may deliver short-term outputs such as infrastructure. In the long run though, such approaches do little to address the non-material concerns of villagers like Yohannes and the root causes of poverty and disadvantage. In fact, external technocratic interventions may further disempower villagers and create new forms of inequality by shifting agency toward external professional intermediaries (lawyers, economists, NGO activists, policy specialists, usually outsiders) and away from marginalised local communities such as women’s groups and lower socioeconomic households.

A large participatory research project, Voices of the Poor, which collected the views of 60,000 poor people in 60 countries, found that poverty manifests itself in many non-material outcomes. This ranged from feelings of powerlessness, lack of voice, exclusion, breakdown of social fabric, dependency and even shame.

So how do policy-makers deliver concrete public service outcomes in health, education and other priority sectors without shifting autonomy away from local communities and contributing to this culture of dependence? Back in the Melanesian village, locals provide the answer. When asked to identify the greatest strengths and sources of pride in their community, six of ten community members in a focus group discussion referred to the term swadaya. Derived from Sanskrit but translated to an Eastern Indonesian context, swadaya refers to a concept of collective action where community members contribute within their own village. Swadaya could come in the form of rocks, sand and other physical materials donated by the village for the building of roads or bridges. It could include volunteered labour and time. It could even involve a women’s group working together to reduce maternal and neonatal mortality rates by providing nutritious supplements to help disadvantaged and malnourished mothers and children in their community.

On delivering public service outcomes without creating dependence on external assistance, a women’s discussion group points to a number of common themes surrounding swadaya, including a greater sense of ownership, participation and thus control of development interventions. “Swadaya is from our community, for our community… our village, our contribution.”[1]Such forms of participatory development have gained momentum across a range of contexts. Ubudehe in Rwanda refers to the traditional practice and cultural value of collective action. Since 2001, ubudehe has been utilised as a popular platform for democracy. People are given the political space to gain experience and engage with local government to solve local problems.

In Kenya, local community members from the Kibera slum, one of the largest slums in the world, become agents of change by contributing as Kibera mappers. Through the use of open source mapping techniques locals create topic and sector maps, for health facilities for schools, for sanitation and waste, and for security and vulnerability. The sharing of this information within the community through Voice of Kibera has prompted reflection and action and has empowered local community members to engage more effectively with local authorities.

There are some signs that high level policy-makers are starting to take local voices and participatory approaches more seriously. The High Level Panel (HLP) of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 development agenda proposed a number of transformative shifts. Notably, this included the commitment to “ensure that no person – regardless of ethnicity, gender, geography, disability, race or other status – is denied universal human rights and basic economic opportunities.”

The challenge for policy-makers is to ensure that the principle of ‘leave no one behind’ realises its potential to empower disadvantaged communities, rather than just becoming a slogan. Here, the role of effective participation is critical. Advocates of developing countries such as Ibrahima Hathie, the research director at IPAR Senegal and the Southern Voice Initiative, argues that “if we want to achieve this aspiration [of leave no one behind], we must ensure that the various stakeholders are involved in the different processes [of negotiations and development]… It is [also] important to leave no voice behind.”

In order to learn from past experience and ensure that a post-2015 agenda is relevant to the complex local realities of an ever-changing world, policy makers will benefit from engaging with a wider range of local stakeholders. By involving developing country governments and their people as concrete partners rather than as symbolic beneficiaries, we have a greater chance of planting resilient trees which grow and last rather than vulnerable seedlings likely to be blown away by the dry winds.

Less than six months away from the 2015 deadline of the MDGs, there has never been a better time to listen to the voices of marginalised and disadvantaged communities.

Nicholas Metherall is a student at La Trobe University’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and was a Global Voices delegate to the Study Tour on UN Sustainable Development and Environmental Challenges.

[1] Ms Ibu Lamaholot, (Translated)