Empowerment for Sustainable Development

Community-based empowerment can occur when politics, policies and governance align to confer power to a community to pursue its own development. There will always be certain constraints under which a community must work (such as a national building standards code and business operating licences) but empowerment will be facilitated where the following five key factors are present: (i) ownership of land and related resources; (ii) the capacity by a community to take and make decisions themselves and then, importantly, implement them; (iii) a corollary of which is that there are local stakeholders within the community who possess the capacity to exercise leadership and gain support for their vision or a better future. A lack of expertise and human resources has a negative effect; (iv) ownership or at least majority control of any business or development that a community establishes; and (v) the ability to exercise control over their own values, heritage and traditions (Sofield, Empowerment for Sustainable Tourism Development, Pergamon, 2003). The development of Yim Tin Tsai as pursued by the local community over the past two decades is a graphic example of empowerment arising from the processes of heri-ligion.