Influencing the global through understanding the local Harold Brookfield’s contribution to international organisations’ biodiversity policy office
Juha I. Uitto
Asia Pacific Viewpoint, Vol. 46, No. 2, August 2005
ISSN 1360-7456, pp143–151
United Nations Development Programme, New York, NY 10017, USA.
Abstract:
This article focuses on a significant paradigm shift in the approaches to biodiversity conser-vation in the developing countries that has affected important international organisations, includingthe Global Environment Facility (GEF). This paradigm shift marks a movement beyond protectedareas to production landscapes. It is argued that one particular project, People, Land Manage-ment and Environmental Change (PLEC), developed under the leadership of Harold Brookfield hascontributed significantly to the shift. The project was instrumental in introducing the term ‘agrodi-versity’ that encompasses biological diversity as well as the management diversity found in small-holder agricultural systems at all levels. The article describes the evolution of PLEC into a majorinternational collaborative project funded through the GEF. It highlights the project’s main achieve-ments and its influence on the policy-making in the GEF relying on the findings of independentevaluations.
Keywords: agrodiversity, biodiversity conservation, tropical agriculture, local knowledge, participa-tory development, international policy-making, PLEC, global environment facility
Introduction
Several paradigm shifts have occurred over thepast few decades in rural and agricultural devel-opment. These shifts have been reflected in the policies of international development agencies active in promoting varying approaches through their projects and programmes in the developing world.
The main reason for the paradigm shifts is increased knowledge and understanding of the underlying causes of development and its im-pediments. The international community has learned from its mistakes and its limited suc-cesses in promoting development in developing countries. More nuanced concepts of human de-velopment have largely replaced the simple no-tion of focusing on economic growth, as it has become evident that economic growth in and by itself has not resulted in development that has benefited the majority of countries and cer-tainly not the majority of the people. Nor has the transfer of technology and knowledge from the North to the South brought about desired changes.
Certain individuals have played a central role in analysing the development process and in in-stigating the paradigm shifts. It has often been insightful people who have concluded that the prevailing model does not produce the desired results and that novel thinking is required. Too often, many of even the useful interventions have been based on theory alone, which has limited their application to real life situations. The truly valuable contributions have been made by in-dividuals who have been able to combine their considerable theoretical erudition with concrete experiences from the practice of development at the field level.
The purpose of this article is to examine the contributions of one such pioneer, Harold Brook field, who has been able to combine the theoretical with the practical, to the paradigm shifts that have affected international develop-ment organisations in the past decades. The ar-ticle will focus on a major project, the People Land Management and Environmental Change(PLEC), driven by him.
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