Local Communities Count - Beyond Public Private Partnerships (PPP)

Beyond PPPs

A great deal of excellent work has been done in building working public and private partnerships (known as PPPs) for sustainable development.  It is important that we move beyond Public-Private-Partnerships (PPP) to engage and involve local communities.  We need to work on building Public-Private-Community Partnerships (PPCPs).  

At the end of the day, the private sector controls the market.  True sustainable development involves the spawning of entrepreneurial opportunities and linkages for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.  Employees need to become employers. The private sector has a key role to play in facilitating this development process.  Tourism-related business need to be activated through real community partnerships and outsourcing.  For example, instead of owning gardening equipment and hiring gardeners, partner with entrepreneurs to deliver the required services.

One of the real challenges is the development of mechanisms through which this community involvement process can be activated.  Any ideas?

If you found this post interesting, you may also want to look at our other posts below:

Sustainability is Sexy!

Environmental Injustice - Footprints of a Rasta

Diagonal Integration - A New Slant for the New Paradigm

Environmental Injustice - The Footprint of a Rasta

It is evident that the tremendous negative environmental impacts that islands are facing – rising water levels that threaten to submerge islands in the Bahamas, Indian Ocean and the Maldives; mega hurricanes that devastate complete islands (Hurricane David in Dominica; Hurricane Ivan in Grenada); coral bleaching that threaten coral reefs everywhere, are caused by the growing global damage to the environment.  However, the damage to the islands is not equivalent to the damage that is caused by their own environmental wrongdoings. 

The fact is that islands bear more than their FAIR share of environmental damage.  Islands’ activities to save Planet Earth, while no doubt need to be improved, bear no relation to the damage that they suffer.  At the same time, islands cannot seek justice by pity alone.  There needs to be more research and clear statistics that measure the impact, for example of a Rastafarian's way of life in Dominica, Jamaica and St. Vincent, compared to the environmental footprint of a wealthy citizen of a wealthy country.  How many Rastas will it take to ‘achieve’ the same level of environmental damage as a wealthy rich country consumer?