A systems approach to enhancing capacity in promoting sustainable development: Development organizations designing their own self-sustainability strategies

• In Event: A future for systems approaches in education? Part 1: Systems approaches in education research

Proposal

The distribution of political and financial resources among stakeholders in development is typically unfair and ineffective: it hinders many stakeholders’ capacity to become agents of their own development, entrenches vested interests, and undermines the capacity of development initiatives to develop sustainable solutions. This is largely because those with the greater advocacy capacity tend to promote what they think is best, frequently overlooking or imposing it over different actors’ needs and priorities – and thus ignoring the developmental context in which the initiatives are to be implemented. In response, development initiatives have sought to enhance their self-sustainability capacity – that is, their capacity to realize sustainable outcomes by reducing their dependency on external resources and their susceptibility to systemic and environmental constraints.

In this presentation we discuss five strategies that development initiatives have evolved to increase their capacity for self-sustainability:
• creating and promoting integrated responses;
• planning self-sustainability;
• enhancing trust and solidarity;
• rethinking funding strategies; and
• motivating local ownership.
These were generated from a comparative study of a number of development initiatives in different parts of the world – notably in India, Mexico and on the Amazon River – in which we identified strategies to do with their social objectives, local conditions, resourcing, organizational structure, financial sustainability, and scalability. Our research involved site visits, interviews and bibliographical research; was informed by complexity theory and the capability approaches; and was designed on the basis of sustainability as defined by the Brundtland Report. Our presentation is significant for stakeholders in the field of development who, aware of their substantial dependency on external political and financial support, seek strategies apposite to their particular conditions and interests in order to increase their degree of self-sustainability.

Author

• Mark Mason, Education University of Hong Kong