The article studies how local risk perceptions are influenced by state support for provision of public goods and overall institutional arrangements for the management of common pool resources (CPRs). Purposively selected communities from tribal and settled areas with variations in access to irrigation flows (perennial and non-perennial) set up a matrix for analysis. The composite risk index was constructed by calculating an incidence and severity index based on the local perceptions. The research findings have policy implications for development planning through the identification of livelihood risks, and risks associated with the management of CPRs.

Since it emerged, the field of communication for development has undergone a constant process of redefinition. Since the 1990s, the importance of participation in social and communicative processes has been stressed, and studies carried out during those years focused on participation as an important component to be considered. The so-called community media are privileged forces driving the participatory communication for development approach. Since their emergence and up to the recent studies, community media have been characterised by the centrality of citizenship participation in the creation of widespread messages, and in the processes of social change that they promote.

This article discusses the CORE Group Polio Project Ethiopia's introduction of community-based surveillance (CBS) of acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) to support polio eradication. A USAID-funded collaboration among Ethiopian and US-based NGOs, the CGPP supports volunteers in education about AFP and encouraging case reporting. Volunteers also conduct active case searches, visiting community leaders likely to have contact with paralysis cases. The project's methods strengthen communities' awareness of AFP and their connection to the health system. Data indicate a near doubling of AFP reporting in project areas since the implementation of CBS, according to MOH-E (Ministry of Health, Ethiopia)/WHO statistics.

The global financial crisis is envisaged to have impacted some Southern countries, including India, less severely than most countries in the North. India's expected economic growth of over nine per cent was brought down to just over five per cent. In the aftermath of the crisis, a positive growth figure itself sent optimistic signals. But in a country where nearly 80 per cent of the population – mostly in rural areas – lives on under US$2 a day with a high level of social and economic vulnerability, the effects of the crisis threaten to push many into deprivation. Yet, scattered evidence suggests the emergence of savings-led self-help groups for women amongst the poorest and socially excluded communities to overcome financial vulnerabilities. Grounded in participatory methods, the focal point this is the individual rural woman driving the well-being and the poverty agenda. The paper considers if there are lessons that can be drawn from this micro-level shift for the larger global crisis.

Since 2008, Europe has been mired in a series of complex and interconnected economic, financial, fiscal, and political crises, prompting citizens across Europe to erupt onto the streets to protest against cuts to pensions and public services, taxation increases, and government corruption. The current crises have resulted in profound challenges for many civil society organisations, yet they also arguably present an opportunity for many groups and have prompted the re-emergence of a more vibrant and politically engaged civil society in some European countries, as compared to the large contract delivery NGOs which have dominated recent years, sometimes to the detriment of small civil society organisations which are the backbone of European civil society However, in order to fully understand these current and emerging trends, we should cast our gaze further back. This article aims to contextualise recent trends through providing a brief history of the emergence and development of civil society in Europe, drawing on seven longer case studies from the UK, Republic of Ireland, the Netherlands, and Greece. It will then discuss some of the main issues and trends, and reflect on possible future directions for civil society in Europe.

This study examines the student movement in Chile, which brought about the largest mobilisations since the restoration of democracy in the early 1990s. The students protested the so-called “education apartheid” created by the Pinochet regime and preserved by all democratic governments ever since, in which the formerly public education system had been largely replaced by a more massive but also expensive, highly stratified one, financed by private debt. The students' demands for free and high-quality education for all gained the support of broad sectors of civil society, which was expressed both in opinion polls and in massive participation in demonstrations.