Community-Based Sustainable Development: Consensus or Conflict? [Editorial]

<p dir="ltr">In the 1990s community-based' approaches to environment and development have become <i>de </i><i>rigeur</i>. With the environment firmly on international development agendas, and in the wake of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), there is an emerging global consensus that the implementation of what has come to be known as 'sustainable development' should be based on local-level solutions derived from community initiatives.</p><p dir="ltr">This <i>IDS Bulletin </i>seeks to add to and complement an emerging set of critiques and offers some reflections on the practice of community-based sustainable development. It does so by taking to task several key, base assumptions embedded in community-based sustainable development: assumptions concerning the existence of homogeneous, consensual 'communities'; the existence of stable, universally valued 'environments', and of a potentially harmonious relationship between these. By taking a different starting point – one grounded in an appreciation of social and ecological difference, and of differential perspectives on and command over environmental goods and services – the <i>IDS Bulletin </i>suggests that conflict, rather than consensus, may be the key defining feature of the situations which such initiatives address. This, in turn, carries very different implications for policies and practical strategies in the environment and development field. The existence of conflict should certainly not be a justification for rejecting community-based approaches, but it does require them to be pursued differently.</p>