In New Zealand indigenous participation is identified as a means to achieve effective environmental conservation and indigenous empowerment. This article suggests that within current frameworks the scope for meaningful authority and control to be devolved to indigenous communities is limited. The Mimiwhangata project demonstrates the importance of participatory processes in confronting policy shortcomings. Although the successful implementation of culture-centred conservation offers a conservation model both accommodating state-led goals and providing for indigenous cultural empowerment, structural change is required within conservation policy to achieve this outcome.

Endogenous African governance systems are criticised for excluding women. This critique ignores several realities that women have played roles different from those of men. This article examines the roles that women play in endogenous governance structures of patrilineal and matrilineal ethnic groups in rural areas in Malawi on leadership, violent conflict prevention, and transformation. It argues that these endogenous governance systems inherently contain features that enable women to actively participate and play powerful leadership roles, though men dominate in terms of numbers and authority. These gender patterns do not seem to change much despite the changing political, social, and economic environment.

Development theory and practice in developing countries are dominated by the power of Western ideas, worldviews, actors, tools, models, and frameworks. Consequently, the resulting development interventions may too rarely be locally rooted, locally driven, or resonant with local context. Another reality is that theories and practice from developing countries rarely travel to the Western agencies dominating development, undermining the possibility of a beneficial synergy that could be obtained from the best of the two worlds: West and developing countries. There are many reasons why the experience of locally driven development is not communicated back to global development actors, including but not limited to the marginal role of Southern voices in global fora. Perhaps the greatest unwelcome and unintended outcome is that by trying to create, or perhaps better said, “clone” development in developing countries in the image of Western “development”, development efforts defeat their own purpose through undermining their own relevance, legitimacy, and sustainability.

Since 2006, international organisations in Lao PDR have worked closely with local actors in order to foster the creation of an enabling environment for civil society. By conceiving of civil society development as a system involving a number of closely-connected actors and levels, international actors have been able to contribute to both the adoption of a Decree on Associations, which for the first time in Lao history regulates the civil society sector, and to the organisational strengthening of the few existing domestic organisations. This paper evaluates the impact of international actors' initiatives and assesses civil society's prospects for engaging in human rights work.

The notion of a social compact between government, business, and civil society as a basis for long-term economic development and growth underpins economic models in many industrialised countries. The search for a new social order is pressing in developing countries where high levels of economic growth exposes the growing gaps between those who participate economically and those who are left behind. This creates new interest groups and alliances and sees old social orders collapse. Finding ways to bring about more inclusive development in developing countries through a social compact is the focus of this paper.

The extent to which project outcomes are sustained years after development projects have ended is not routinely investigated. This study assessed the long-term impacts of a fire management project in eastern Indonesia seven years after the funding ended. Post-project evaluation increased understanding of the factors determining sustainability of project outcomes and links to development impacts. The continuation of community fire management and agroforestry groups was linked to demonstration of benefits to farmers and multi-level engagement. Activities had ceased where ownership was disputed. Some long-term impacts were outside the original aims of the fire project, including district government agencies applying fire mapping skills to other development issues.

The paper examines how the perceived ownership of a water resource negatively influenced local people's attitudes towards payment of potable water tariffs and exacerbated conflicts between water users and service providers in the Dalun community of the northern region of Ghana. The paper presents a case study of how community participation and endogenous approaches to conflict resolution contributed to payment of water tariffs. The findings show that the establishment of a tri-water sector partnership (TWSP), consisting of the Ghana Water Company Ltd (GWCL), private sector development practitioners, and community water boards, led to positive mediation of water tariff conflicts using the institution of chieftaincy. Alternative, endogenous conflict resolution methods combined with modern methods in a tripartite partnership showed promise as an approach to managing conflicts in water projects and in broader poverty reduction efforts.

Acknowledging debates about what constitutes effective and useful evaluation practice, this paper explores the particular challenges of evaluating an innovative approach to community development for multiple stakeholders with different interests and different levels of confidence in particular evaluation methodologies. The innovation – applying an Asset Based approach to Community Development (ABCD) in an Ethiopian context – presents further challenges to evaluation because of its open-ended nature and problems of attribution. On the other hand, the culture of risk-taking encouraged by the supporters of innovation provides the space for genuine lessons to be learnt about failure as well as success.

This paper draws on the results from a recent World Bank-funded project designed to inform policy-making and climate change adaptation planning in small and medium-sized cities in Latin America and the Caribbean. The focus was on floods and landslides, which are the two most common climate-related risks in cities across the region. The project allowed the application of the Urban Risk Assessment (URA) tool developed by the World Bank and the drawing of valuable lessons which may also be applicable to the many methods and tools available for climate change adaptation planning in the rapidly urbanising cities of developing countries.

This qualitative study investigates how pre-departure orientations of two aid agencies in Kosovo grapple with themes related to sexuality and gender-difference. Through a series of in-depth interviews with eight gay male aid workers and an analysis of official texts, the author's findings suggest that institutions operate on heteronormative values that may explain why troubling encounters occur in the workplace. As a result, study participants must navigate through these encounters without much support, information, or direction from the agency. The author suggests that aid agencies adopt a policy shift towards intersectional, whole-person inclusivity in their efforts to prepare aid workers.