ABSTRACT
Development practice regarding education and capacity building challenges many assumptions about how development happens, what strategies lead toward poverty reduction and how best to manage resources in different ways. The success or failure of poverty reduction programs is directly related to the often perverse relation (downward or vicious spiral) between increased poverty and increased environmental degradation; as people become poorer, they expand the pressure on the local environment in their search for resources. Moreover, those who are most vulnerable tend to be women and their children; thus, it is critical to focus on their situation to ensure success of any effort to protect and ultimately restore the local environment.
Within the Master’s of Development and Conservation Practice programs (MDCP), we use concepts of social constructivism and critical theory as a teaching-learning experience. The approach is based on sustainable livelihoods, the community capitals framework and human basic needs. To this we add value chains and territoriality as methodological and conceptual frameworks to analyze, understand and promote sustainable ecological management and poverty reduction. Participants within the program are continuously reminded of the relevance of the promotion and acknowledgment of inclusive approaches for mobilizing change. Furthermore, faculty continually stress that acknowledging endogenous change and gender inclusion must be participatory and involve an understanding of the historical context, a genuine attempt at two-way knowledge exchange and, ultimately, capacity building of marginalized populations. The MDCP alumni become true agents of change who are capable of promoting and mobilizing endogenous processes toward a truly sustainable developmental process with the implicit understanding that there is no conservation without development and no development without conservation.
