Designed for both experienced and new trainers who have an interest in training others in the use of participatory methods, whether they are researchers, practitioners, policy-makers, villagers or trainers.

More than twenty years have passed since community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) rose to prominence in different parts of Africa as a strategy for rural development, local empowerment, and conservation.  Led by new ideas about the merits of decentralized, collective resource governance regimes, and creative field experiments such as Zimbabwe’s CAMPFIRE, these community-based approaches evolved in a wide range of ecological, political, and social contexts across Africa.

Impulsées par de nouvelles idées sur les mérites des régimes décentralisés de gouvernance collective des ressources et par les expériences créatives menées sur le terrain comme CAMPFIRE au Zimbabwe, ces approches communautaires ont évolué dans une variété de contextes écologiques, politiques et sociaux aux quatre coins de l’Afrique.

This multimedia publication is aimed at policy makers, students, civil society groups, and development communication specialists. The book describes the way co-inquirers worked together in the drylands of Southern India to produce social and ecological knowledge for sustainability, autonomy and equity. Their collective and empowering experience is vividly captured by marginalised women farmers who are also village level film makers - The Community Media Trust of the Deccan Development Society (DDS). Twelve videos make up the four DVD set accompanying the publication.

This issue captures the diversity of Immersion opportunities for development professionals - spending a period of time living with and learning from a poor family. The common denominator is a concern to bring immersion participants face to face with ordinary people, giving them the chance to test old assumptions, develop new perspectives, and strengthen their commitment to the challenge of poverty eradication.

Nyéléni, a legendary Malian peasant who excelled in cultivating the land, gave her name to a global forum on food sovereignty organised in Sélingué, Mali, in February 2007. The Coordination Nationale des Organisations Paysannes du Mali (CNOP) organised a preparatory workshop in Bamako on the privatisation of seeds in West Africa.

Nyéléni, une paysanne malienne légendaire qui excellait dans la culture de la terre, a donné son nom à un Forum mondial sur la souveraineté alimentaire organisé à Sélingué (Mali) en février 2007 qui a permis à plus de 600 participants - paysans, agriculteurs, bergers, pêcheurs, peuples indigènes, travailleurs migrants, femmes, et jeunes - d'affirmer leur désir et leur capacité de nourrir les peuples du monde avec une alimentation saine, de qualité et abondante.

A broad arch of deforestation spans the lower Brazilian Amazon, cutting through the State of Mato Grosso. At the forest frontier, varied traditions of family farming are being adapted by migrant settlers of diverse origins. The forceful expansion of soybean plantations led by global markets is displacing family farms or incorportating them into out-growing schemes. Commodity plantations are pushing cattle ranching further into the forests. Logging is also opening up new access at the frontier. Conflicts are all but inevitable. As associations endeavor to strengthen the voice of marginalized groups their role and functions continue to evolve. This report analyses eight active associations along the BR 163 highway in Mato Grosso. It assesses the factors that have allowed them to function and spread benefits to the poor. It also identifies the types of external support that have proven useful.

Barbara Ward is remembered as one of the great intellectuals and internationalists of the 20th century. And among the first champions of sustainable development. In this book, David Satterthwaite describes her life and her works, especially the main themes of her many books. This includes a discussion of her contribution to the formative years of the Sustainable Development agenda and her role in building the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). The book also includes personal recollections about Barbara Ward from Maurice Strong, David Runnalls, Sartaj Aziz and Sir Richard Jolly.

The outcomes of an electronic conference on the ‘Future of Food and Small Scale Producers’ are presented in this report. The electronic discussion primarily involved indigenous, small and family farmers, landless and fisherfolk as well as their representative organisations. The focus was on small-scale food producers – women and men who produce and harvest field and tree crops as well as livestock, fish and other aquatic organisms. The E-Conference process was thus specifically designed to allow the excluded to voice their views, analysis and priorities on the future of food, farming, environment and human well being. Contributors were invited to describe the practice and underlying rationale of farmers and indigenous peoples’ alternatives to the modernization and industrialization of food, agriculture and land/water use. The views and analysis of small scale producers that are summarised in this report offer a deeper understanding of alternative movements in rural and urban areas. Contributors explain why keeping farmers and indigenous peoples on their land is of fundamental importance for the well being of society and nature throughout the world.

Uganda's 2,000-3,000 forest-based associations play an important role in the country's sustainable development. They include community groups made up of individuals (and often with a strong social focus) and industrial groups made up of enterprises (and often with a commercial focus). They span a number of different areas: forest production (both timber and non-timber forest products), primary and secondary processing, management, training and enterprise support and environmental services (such as ecotourism or carbon sequestration projects). This report surveys 62 different associations. It charts the reasons for their formation, the systems by which they govern their activities, the distribution of costs and benefits to members and the nature of external intervention and support. It draws out lessons about the types of association that contribute most to rural livelihoods and appropriate forms of support.