Working Group - Empowerment

Conclusions

• Anthropological and scientific research as a tool and input for local empowerment.

• Knowledge management to allow access to power, and lobbying and advocacy to influence seats of power.

• Changes should be institutionalized through the replication of experience in various spaces. It is important to identify facilitators capable of ensuring such exchanges.

• Management of land vis-à-vis the state. Local empowerment under a comprehensive approach to land. We must look beyond simple plots of land in order to foster policy formulation and linkages among communities and organizations. Capacity-building as a tool of local empowerment.

• Use tools and techniques at the local level to promote spaces for access to and titling of land.

• Empowerment should not be divorced from management and resolution of conflicts; methods used should be suited to the local situation.

• Local empowerment cannot be a neutral process nor simply a component of a project; rather it is a political process that should anticipate contradictions and counter them with identified strengths and forces.

• Empowerment should take communities' legal status into account, ensuring that legal structures are created by the government and the state.

• Accurate information coupled with appropriate technology to access such information makes it possible to negotiate with authorities and seats of power. Local, participatory approaches to data collecting should be usable by governments, and results should be technically efficient and valid (mapping).

• Access to credit based on production rather than on land ownership.

• Local empowerment should bear in mind that groups are not homogeneous: some groups wield power and others are vulnerable (e.g. women).

• Bases need to be laid to ensure security in tenancy, using tools and mechanisms of production, productivity, access to credit, etc.

• When negotiating, win-win opportunities should be created by making sure that weaker parties possess all the necessary tools for negotiating.