Towards a Model of Integrated Community-Managed Development

The recent broadening of the conceptualisation of poverty which goes beyond the narrow financial definition of a mere lack of money to acquire food and shelter, includes several dimensions of limited access to health care, education, public support, employment and communication, and vulnerability to economic crises, violence and conflict, recently extended by moral and spiritual dimensions of humiliation, disempowerment and denial of human rights. Despite renewed approaches to pay more attention to the new Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), recent international strategies tend to remain incapable of engendering local peoples’ participation needed to realise poverty alleviation and sustainable development at the community level. A short review of the subsequent approaches, implemented over the past decades by major international organisations such as the World Bank with its financially-based ‘World Development Approach’ and the United Nations with its people-centered ‘Human Development Approach’ shows that both policies towards poverty reduction remain inadequate to reach the poor, particularly in the developing countries. This Chapter identifies the ‘Missing Link’ in the international poverty reduction policies, and elaborates on alternative approaches based on the advance in neo-ethnoscience thinking of Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Development (IKS&D). Embarking on the integration of global and local knowledge systems and institutions, an IKS-based Model for Integrated Community-Managed Development (ISCD) is introduced, which is based on such a broader, holistic assessment of poverty and poverty reduction with a view to achieve more realistic sustainable community development.