Paper - Abrcd - Putting The Asset In Rural Community Development

Asset Based Rural Community Development: putting the ‘rural’ into ABCD in the UK. Dr. Rhys Evans

Abstract Asset-Based Community Development is an approach which is quickly gathering momentum in policy circles in a number of countries, including Canada, the United States, the UK and Ireland. Core to the approach is the idea that communities contain a number of diverse assets which they can use to ‘develop themselves’, some of which are material and tangible, such as Village Halls and landscapes, and others which are intangible, including social and cultural capital features such as language, arts and music, traditional practices, economic history, etc. Another key factor of the ABCD approach is that central authorities have a role to play in supporting community self-development by supporting the creation of material assets such as buildings (but also possibly, ferries, community woodlands, sports pitches, etc) within which the development of intangible assets can be staged. This paper looks at the community rural development scene in the UK and Ireland to find specific factors which rural communities need in engaging in a successful ABCD programme, thus creating a specific Asset-Based Rural Community Development (ABRCD) model, working from the experience of the Carnegie Commission UK’s Rural Action Research Fund.

Keywords Community development, rural development. Rural Re-Sourcing.

development,

asset-based

community

1. Introduction Asset-Based Community Development (ABDC) is an approach with a growing band of adherents. The fundamental principle of Asset-based approaches is that investment in Assets provides a platform for sustainable community development. The model acknowledges that development is a process, and that assets are one essential contributor to that process. However, what are considered to be Assets varies and the issue is sometimes contested. An over-focus on the provision of assets tends to continue a paradigm of communities who are passive recipients of development, based upon their needs and demonstration of victim-hood. In both international and rural development however, deficit-based approaches have been demonstrated to be insufficient and as a result, ABCD approaches have tended to be partial and vulnerable to critique on the grounds of social justice. When however, Intangible Assets, particularly those within the categories of Human and Social Capital are included, then communities themselves own valuable resources they can bring to the development table. If they are put at the heart of identifying what these Assets are,

1

and developing them, the resulting development partnerships spin off not just an increased number and quality of physical assets, but also increased individual and social capital and capacity and enhanced local economic development.. By allowing local access to local decisions, using local knowledges, they build sustainability into the development process. This paper is the result of work being done with rural communities across the UK and Ireland by the Carnegie UK Trust. The Trust’s Rural Action Research Programme (RARP) is in the first of its three years and is developing an asset-based approach which it is calling Rural Re-Sourcing, designed to acknowledge the essential assets for development which communities already possess, but which are still underrecognized, and to support in their development. Rather than explore the actual research [to be explored in subsequent papers in progress] this paper focuses upon the intellectual path which led to the formation of this Programmei. This model is an Asset-based model and it asserts that the Intangible Assets which communities already possess are the keys to them building strong local economies and societies. It acknowledges that building sustainability into these economies and communities involves handing the control and delivery of local services to them in a situation where they have identified their need and willingness to support its satisfaction. This paper briefly touches on the building blocks from which the idea was developed.

2. Sustainable Livelihoods An early response to the deficiencies of Exogenous (Top-down) Development was the Sustainable Livelihoods (SLiv) approach. Developed in the early 1990s in response to continuing poverty in developing nations despite large scale interventions, Sustainable Livelihoods looks to people and their ways of living to build models of sustainable development built around the knowledge and skills of those engaging in them. Sustainable Livelihoods is both a goal, and an approach. It features local, self sustaining solutions to poverty and it valorises the things poor communities bring to the development challenge. The direct incorporation of a fundamental Social Justice approach marks SLiv as different from many other models, particularly of structural development. As an approach and model it was adopted by a number of key international institutions as their model for international development, including the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the FAO, the UNDP of the United Nations and DfID in the UK.

3. The Five Capitals Model The organisation Forum for the Future is one of the leading bodies promoting sustainability in the UK and its ideas have contributed significantly to the development of the ABRCD model. Founded in 1996, it was formed “out of a conviction that many of the solutions needed to defuse the environmental crisis and build a more sustainable society are already to hand” (FftF 2006). It developed and promoted what

2

was called the Five Capitals Model. This stipulated that successful local development is built out of a set of resources which people in communities bring to the development project. In this model, resources are treated like financial capital in that they are fundamental assets which are integral components of the development process. These Five Capitals are: Natural, Human, Social, Manufactured and Financial Capital. Examples of each are included in the table below. This approach was further developed with the establishment of the UK Sustainable Development Commission by the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, in 2000 with FftF founder Jonathon Porritt, as its Chairman.

Fig 1. The Five Capitals Model Natural

Human

Biodiversity Landscape character Soils Water Air and climate Minerals and other non-renewables Employment and skills base

Social

Education and training Health and well-being Leadership and trust

Manufactured

Community cohesion and sense of place Stakeholder networks and processes Archeology

Financial BB

Buildings and built heritage Transport infrastructure, traffic and access networks Processes and waste products Energy production and Consumption IT and telecommunications Public funding e.g. for CAP or rural regeneration Local authority expenditure

3

Conservation funding Local and extra-local business investment Other (such as match funding) (source: Forum for the Future 2004.) The Five Capitals approach offers a path away from seeing people and communities as ‘victims’ and a way out of the self-perpetuating trap of ‘needs-based‘ development. It offers a multi-level, multiple input model which is able to identify important contributors to the development task (assets) in the least endowed of citizens. It asserts that true sustainability derives from ownership of the process by those who are both its subjects and its objects. Good work has been done by the Forum for the Future in England in developing this approach and it’s success can be seen in its influence on contemporary attempts to rethink rural development by Defra, by the Big Lottery Fund (a major funder of rural community development) and by the Carnegie UK Trust. The idea of these Capitals being resources for development brings us to the next step along this model of community development -- Asset-based approaches.

4. Asset-based Community Development approaches (ABCD) Another of the responses to the deficiencies of ‘needs-based’ approaches to development has been a focus upon Asset-based Community Development. Promulgated and promoted in North America in the 1990s, it arose from the challenges of regenerating American urban and rural communities which were locked in selfreinforcing cycles of deprivation. The two main proponents of this approach came from Northwestern University in Chicago (Kretzmann & McKnight 1993) and the Coady Institute in Canada. “ABCD draws attention to social assets: the gifts and talents of individuals, and the social relationships that fuel local associations and informal networks” (Mathie, Cunningham 2002). Here the focus is upon ‘unrealized’ resources such as personal skills and attributes, relationships and social capital as key assets in the task of building sustainable development from the ground up. American development charities including the Ford Foundation have begun adopting an assetbased approach in recent years. These intangible resources are similar to those identified by Bryden and others in their Distinctiveness of Rural Areas (DORA) project (Bryden et al 2002), which looked for social and cultural factors distinguishing differential performance in local economic development. Winning an EU award for research quality, this work became influential in the inclusion of local communities, knowledges and practices, relationships and network into new European models of rural development in Europe. In their study, key factors in the success of endogenous development were seen to be networks and relationships, whether of kin, religion, work practice or regional identity. These were identified as assets which belonged to people in places and were seen to be key contributors to success in rural economic and social development.

4

In effect, these intangible resources amount to social capital (Ray 2001, Coleman 1988). The Asset-based Community Development model thus acknowledges a two-fold aspect of development, with central funders on one hand and engaged communities on the other. Although social justice concerns lay behind the development of the ABCD approach, in practice it has come under criticism as it can be seen as allowing central authorities to wipe their hands of any responsibility beyond investing in material assets. The model as it has been institutionalised, particularly in America, does not acknowledge the fact that social capital is a process, not a fixed point, and though it has an emphasis on social capital, it misses a potentially large number of stillunrecognized assets such as those contained in the Five Capitals model.

5. Asset-based Rural Community Development (ABRCD) in the UK Although the UK and Ireland have different systems of governance, and have seen differing economic and social development in the last decade, their rural areas originate from the same historic model of land-based development, and are faced with a number of similar challenges. These include rural places being subject to a set of changing discourses and practices which have had a large impact on rural development structures. In the first place, the low population densities and the distributed nature of that population places rural communities at a disadvantage when governments are increasingly forced to provide value for money in the delivery of services. Privatisation of delivery and the consolidation of the UK private services sector has led to a kind of centralisation which favours cost-effectiveness over universal delivery of services. This neo-liberal, market-based regime has meant that UK rural communities suffer from a market failure in terms of both public service provision, and often, private market provision. At the same time, the small size of the UK and Ireland and the growth and spread of their relatively large populations has meant that local distinct and rural identities are increasingly coming under threat as the larger national culture increasingly penetrates the most remote corners of these islands. A further challenge faced by rural communities is the short term nature of investment and support. Government responses to the challenges of rural development have undergone frequent changes as policy makers struggle to respond to declining fortunes in the productive sector (agriculture, forestry, fishing), to new European regulations and the impact of the Global Economy. Old policies are replaced by newer ones and project timelines often are very short –one or two years at best. Additionally, the need to respond to a plethora of issues such as new animal welfare and hunting legislation,= and environmental protection regulation, as well as changing governance and agricultural support have created new opportunities, but at the same time kept the rural development landscape destabilized. Thus rural communities in the UK are struggling against multiple challenges – government retreat from universal or public provision of services; the loss of local identities and cultures through out-migration and changing cultural and consumption practices; and short term initiatives from constantly changing forms of governance and of responsibility for rural development.

5

6. Responding to the Challenge -- Rural Re-Sourcing In response to this, the Carnegie UK Trust has adopted a resource-based approach, growing out of its consultation with communities across the UK and Ireland. Working with the Forum for the Future in the UK, and the International Association of Community Development world-wide, it has identified two areas of particular concern. The first is the short-term nature of funding and support for rural community development. The second, and the subject of this paper, is the imperative to move from needs-based projects to asset-based ones. Built into the new Rural Action Research Programme, this asset, or resource-based approach is being called Rural ReSourcing, indicating that it looks to existing community assets as the source of development potential. The Rural Re-Sourcing project mirrors the development of the ABRCD model. This model asserts that the Intangible Assets which communities already possess are the key to them building strong local economies and societies. Things like existing landscape features, local biotic diversity, local practices and local knowledges which once were considered ‘backward’ are now resources which can be mobilized by communities to participate in the burgeoning ‘experience’ economy. This economic sector gives new economic and social value to resources which were previously debased or ignored, capitalising on the distinctiveness of local rural places. And, at the same time, these newly re-valued resources contribute to the growth of local pride in place. Further, this model acknowledges that building sustainability into these economies and communities involves handing the control and where possible, the delivery of local services to them in a situation where they have identified their need and willingness to support it’s satisfaction. It asserts that partnership working, with the integration of complimentary knowledges and assets, forms the most productive and sustainable way of engaging in rural development as local people bring the drive and ownership of their development to the support that central authorities can deliver. In this there are joint but distinct roles for communities, policy practitioners and for central funders. Communities have the responsibility to participate – to engage in the hard local work involved in creating a collective endeavour. Central funders need to recognize that any Capital funding for Community Property must be built upon a thorough consultation process which identifies which assets the community wishes to develop, before commitment is made on building or land. And Policy Practitioners between the two need to work with them to ensure that the conflicting demands of bureaucratic systems do not work against the project. By adding value to the assets that communities already possess, and by building clear rational processes by which they can develop them themselves, ABRCD in the UK will provide a platform from which rural communities across the UK can attempt to build new bright futures. Unlike other ABCD models, this new Asset-Based Rural Community Development model incorporates support for increased community capacity as a central principle. This accomplishes an important Social Justice objective in that, by supporting the community in its development of its intangibles, support is explicitly given for local

6

values, practices and customs and local priorities. It also acknowledges the importance of individual people and their community networks in the development partnership. Their ‘buy-in’ and the quality of provision local knowledge builds sustainability into the model. By incorporating the Five Capitals analysis of what constitutes Assets a far greater range of what communities own is acknowledged, and support in the development of those resources empowers them in partnership with governments.

7. Conclusion There is general agreement that endogenous (bottom-up) development is preferable to exogenous (top-down) development in terms of delivering benefits to communities which are appropriate and sustainable. The trouble with supporting endogenous approaches lies in the mechanics of the development partnership. Until local people are seen as valuable actors, possessing important assets in the development process, development will remain expensive and the results less than satisfactory. By supporting the development of both tangible and intangible assets, ABRCD approaches offer both policy and community circles the chance of a system of development which is more efficient and productive, and which is more satisfying to the people on the ground.

7

References Bryden, John, K. Hart. (2001) DORA: Dynamics of Rural Areas. The International Comparison, An EU Project involving Germany, Greece, Scotland, Sweden. Arkleton Centre for Rural Development Research, University of Aberdeen, UK. Coleman, J. (1988), “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital” American Journal of Sociology 94, pp. 95-120. DFID Sustainable Livelihoods Approach Guidance Sheets. Livelihoods Connect (http://www.livelihoods.org/info/info_guidancesheets.html accessed 14.02.2006) Forum for the Future (2004) Making Land Use Sustainable. Forum for the Future: London. Forum for the Future (2006) http://www.forumforthefuture.org.uk Kretzmann, J. & McKnight, J. (1993). Building communities from the inside out. Chicago, IL: ACTA Publications Mathie, A & G. Cunningham. (2002) From Clients to Citizens: Asset-Based Community Development as strategy for Community Development. The Coady International Institute: St. Francis Xavier University, Canada. Mathie A & G. Cunningham (2003) Who is Driving Development? Reflections on the Transformative Potential of Asset-Based Community Development The Coady International Institute: St. Francis Xavier University, Canada. Ray, Christopher, 2001: Culture Economies. Newcastle: CRE Press.

Relevant links: Department for International Development, UK. http://www.dfid.gov.uk/ Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, UK. http://www.defra.gov.uk/ Forum for the Future, UK. http://www.forumforthefuture.org.uk/ The Big Lottery Fund, UK. http://www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/ The Carnegie UK Trust, Rural Commission. www.carnegieuktrust.org.uk/ 8

The Ford Foundation, USA. http://www.fordfound.org/ UK Sustainable Development Commission. http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/

About the Author Dr. Rhys Evans is an human geographer working within the field of rural community development. He was a core research fellow at the Arkleton Centre for Rural Development Research at the University of Aberdeen and subsequently Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Mountain Studies at Perth College UHI. Since July 2005 he has operated Integrate Consulting as an independent research and consulting service (www.integrateconsulting.co.uk ). His clients include the Carnegie UK Trust, Communities Scotland, and the University of the Highlands and Islands Millennium Institute. He can be contacted at: Integrate Consulting, 1 Priory Pl., Perth, UK. PH2 0EA / 01738 560 310 / [email protected]

9

i

The author wishes to express his appreciation to the Carnegie UK Trust (http://www.carnegieuktrust.org.uk/ ) for its support in developing these ideas, and to the colleagues and Commissioners also working on it, who have all contributed significantly to the formation of these ideas.