Participación comunitaria para el menejo sustentable de recursos naturales

Abstract

Students of development committed aterrible mistake by looking upon rural societies solely as farming communities. The emphasis on productivity channeled technical and financial assistance towards raising output at the expense of other considerations. By privileging the market and commercial crops, the new approach sharply circumscribed the diversified character of rural society and the historical orientation towards multi-and inter-cropping. By emphasizing marketable products, the new system disregarded the importance features of many cultural and social systems. This “modern” approach to development also separated the individual from his or her community, evaluating each person’s worth in terms of their output, as single resource managers and profit maximizers. It ignored or even belittled rather than respected their membership in complex societies that function on the basis of collective decision-marking processes, as resource and ecosystem managers.