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"Sustainable Development in Traditional Societies and Communities"
An important aspect in planning the Regional Midterm Session, to be held in Bali in August, 2001, was LEAD's original international curriculum which was adopted in 1992. Often referred to as the generic curriculum, it was designed to guide member programs in providing the Associates with what they ought to know about environment and development and about the constant interaction between them. Also with what they need to know about the demographic factors that affect -- and are affected by -- efforts to both carry out development and to safeguard the environment. The international curriculum also prescribes that the Associates must become familiar with the range of actual environmental, population and development problems and the issues arising from the interaction between those three sets of problems. In that context the Associates also need to familiarize themselves with international efforts and with the international organizations addressing those problems. To come to grips with those problems the Associates need to have an understanding of the various approaches towards sustainable development and of the needed leadership skills together with new tools of analysis, new policy tools and the skills to use them. While the generic curriculum served as the principal reference, the curricula adopted by the member programs for local or national application have remained diversified. This is necessary because of the widely different conditions specific to each of the different member programs. It is further necessary in order to make sure that the knowledge, skills and information obtained by the Associates will be relevant and that they can be effectively and efficaciously applied in their respective social and cultural settings. All of this is to further ensure that our steps and efforts towards the realization of LEAD's vision and mission will be congruent with the social and cultural conditions and with the historical backgrounds that prevail in each of our societies. Understanding Social and Cultural Conditions To get to understand the social and cultural conditions of a society is a difficult but necessary task. It is necessary because those conditions are the identifying traits of a society and as such they also provide the parameters of that society's efforts toward achieving development and progress. Within those parameters society's cultural values shape the political and economic preferences of society's members as well as their behavior and performance. Therefore, we must seek an understanding of social and cultural conditions because, to put it briefly, they matter. Parenthetically, as will be shown later, those conditions matter particularly in traditional societies as these are now experiencing rapid rates of change. There are many factors to be considered as we set ourselves to the task of seeking a better understanding of our respective societies and we might therefore begin by trying to simplify the issue. Simply put, a society -- whether traditional or modern -- encompasses a population whose livelihood depends on the specific combination of physical and ecological traits that define that society's spatial and environmental dimensions and its natural resource endowment. In addition to spatial and environmental dimensions, society also provides the temporal matrix (i.e., the historical context) in which society's human constituents carry out their individual as well as their joint activities. They do so in ways that are sanctioned or condoned by society and in this way society affects and modulates human behavior. Expressed differently, a society is where a specific physical environment with all its traits and characteristics will intersect with a specific population consisting of people with shared behavioral standards and other norms and values. Also, with their systems of governance and of economic practices and with all the other systems and institutions that they have jointly developed and implemented in order to sustain themselves and their society, ensuring their continued existence. Society must uphold the norms and standards agreed upon by its members as they labor to derive sustenance and incomes from their environment and as they run their institutions. Those norms and standards include those that deal with the level of national integration and the levels of permissible sub-national integration in order to minimize internal conflicts. Deciding on those levels and their maintenance need is one of the many aspects requiring a society-wide consensus. Consensus building is indeed one of society's major functions and society must therefore have a structural configuration that enables a self-sustained and meaningful interaction between its members. Change and New Perceptions Society is the venue where its members -- as a collectivity sharing an environment -- have their appointments with history and it is also the venue where they meet the outside world. All of these are historical occurrences and events, which may bring or accelerate change. When a society is undergoing rapid change, as in the case of most of LEAD's member programs and other developing countries, its people must learn how to deal with the impacts of change upon their respective societies. One important impact of change is an increased conflict potential and conflict might indeed break out when a society cannot adequately manage change. Furthermore, the inability to cope with change could also lead to a lowering of a society's consensus building capabilities and its ability to maintain national integration. More and more changes will occur as communications between societies and nations continue to intensify and globalization continues to accelerate. Some of those changes may be the consequences of persisting internal causes such as population pressures and development efforts. Other internal factors might be of an unexpected kind such as economic crises and political upheavals. Internal changes are often a consequence of external changes such as changes in the global constellation of power and in global trade patterns together with other economic and financial changes worldwide. Changes of that kind are part of an age-old process but it should be kept in mind that change had come in great waves of increasing strength with the establishment and consolidation of colonial rule in many of today's developing countries. In those countries, aside from the material aspects of change, the exposure to technological innovations and scientific progress, to intellectual, ideological and social concepts from abroad had a great impact. It brought emancipation to the local population but it also often shook the sense of identity of many, leaving them stranded -- and possibly alienated -- between different cultures. Global interaction has led us to new - and widely shared -- perceptions of the social and physical realities around us. In more recent times it has also led to new concern such as, for instance, the concern for environmental conservation and management. Today, in addition to environmental concerns, there are also worldwide concerns regarding safeguarding basic human rights, good governance and participatory decision-making, gender issues and the protection of the rights of minorities, indigenous populations and ethnic groups and their cultures. Also, concerns that pertain to what we now generally refer to as sustainable development. These have come with the awareness that an appropriate understanding of sustainable development and its possible attainment would require the application of a holistic approach which would embrace concepts and theories obtained from a range of different disciplines. LEAD shares in that awareness and this is reflected in LEAD's international or generic curriculum as well as in the curricula adopted in LEAD's member programs with their different socio-cultural and historical settings and conditions. By focussing on how to appropriately deal with those conditions through comparative studies and analysis, member programs can help in the development of the needed holistic approach towards achieving sustainable development. Theme of the Mid-Term Session The theme of this session deals with the interaction between social conditions and change, particularly desired or planned change, namely the type of change better known as development. The theme will be directed towards exploring and identifying what could or should be done in order for a community to cope with change and to ensure the sustainability of development. Instead of on society, the focus will be on the community as a discrete constituent of society in order to reduce the size and complexity of the issue in view of the very limited time available. The aim of the theme of the session is how to learn to identify the most important factors in the interaction between environment, development and society. Another aim is to learn to assess the extent to which a local community is able to properly manage change, gain economic benefits, managing the environment at the same time and yet retain a sense identity and selfhood. There will be two days of preparatory lectures and discussions and various games for skills-development and the introduction of environmental and community assessment techniques. These will include familiarization with the concept of social capital which, in turn, refers to the strength of mutual trust and community cohesion. In the course of the preparations the Associates will be divided into two observation groups and after the preparatory the Associates will go on a daylong field trip with the observation groups visiting a different community. The Associates will process their observations and apply various community assessment techniques to measure a community's environmental impact and its sustainable livelihood level. To further consider and study the selected communities visited during the field-trip, the Associates in the observation groups might want to consider and agree upon a set of questions they believe need to be raised in the study of societies. For instance, a set of questions dealing with the structure of a society, the components of that structure and the particular traits that set it apart from other societies. Questions related to a society's structure are of relevance to another set of questions which Associates might prefer to raise, namely questions that pertain to the issue of integration and disintegration. Still another set of related questions would deal with the society's capabilities to manage social conflicts. There are, of course, many other questions that the Associates might wish to raise and to develop a consensus on the prioritization of which questions to bring up could be part of the overall exercise. This is to encourage an exchange of experiences from different countries and this would enrich the summary of observations and findings that each observation group is to present at the final stages of the session.
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