Publication

This paper focuses on local environmental problems in the Third World and steps that can be taken to alleviate them. It stresses the need for an approach based on the full involvement of communities in the definition of problems and the formulation of solutions. The paper next discusses the types of collective action undertaken by communities which see their livelihood threatened because they have been deprived of their traditional means of resource management or because of unsustainable resource exploitation on the part of outsiders. The author closes with a discussion of the apparent linkages between poverty and environmental degradation in the Third World, arguing that an analysis positing a simple linkage between these two is incomplete without the inclusion of the concept of empowerment.