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A local development strategy allows the active coordination of the development process taking place in the territory, taking into account local characteristics, changes in the external environment and allowing a positive approach to territorial development in an innovative way. Local development strategies are characterized by at least seven characteristics recommended to local managers responsible for development: vision for the future, creativity, flexibility, activity, created for action, orientation to change and orientation to sustainable gain. The purpose of this paper is to highlight both the needs and requirements of the inhabitants of the Snagov commune, respectively the degree of satisfaction with the public services they benefit from, as well as the development vision of the Snagov commune. To obtain the information necessary for the study, the questionnaire method was used, and the group of people related to the sample filled in the requested data and expressed their opinions regarding public services, infrastructure, community projects. The key challenge is to ensure a balanced and sustainable development of the territory based on polycentric development, providing services to the surrounding rural areas, avoiding the decline of the rural population and ensuring the continued attractiveness of these areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable development - a development model that seeks to ensure a balance between economic growth, quality of life and environmental conservation in the medium and long term, so as to meet the needs of the current generation without compromising the ability to meet the needs of future generations - has represented decades, the guideline that has underpinned development policies, programs and strategies. The issue of the mechanisms of financial support for Romania's agriculture is very important in our country's efforts to become competitive on the European agricultural market. However, the peculiarities of Romanian agriculture remain almost similar to the pre-accession period (fragmented agrarian structures, low technical and economic yields, outdate technical endowment, etc.), and the main question is whether community support mechanisms increase or remain Romanian farm performance, support measures to ensure their survival on the market. The paper highlights the regional development strategies of the NorthEast Region, solutions to improve the process of strategic implementation of development objectives, by providing viable tools for monitoring sustainable development at regional and rural level, eliminating their oversizing trends. The target indicators proposed by this paper and their rationale allow such a realistic and correct estimation of the strategic implementation and the measurement of the impact of the strategic objectives. In this context, we consider that proposed and substantiated result indicators starting from the previous trend of the region, for all strategic priorities 2014-2020, can be much better materialized in projects with major impact on sustainable development both at regional level and the rural environment, and the way of their evaluation and estimation represents a viable methodology for monitoring the regional development strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Small- and large-scale mining land acquisitions and mining establishments continue to grow in Zimbabwe, but the question about the development of sustainability remains problematic. While mining establishments can be regarded as vehicles for development, the evidence of positive effects in terms of sustainability in this case is weak. The mining-sustainability nexus is characterized by conflicts regarding livelihoods, the environment, culture, and social relations. The paper argues that local sustainability challenges generated by mining activities cannot be resolved as long as there is institutionalized exclusion of local communities, hence, aspects such as revision of the current Mines and Minerals Act, involvement of communities affected by the extraction of granite, opportunities for skills development and training involving traditional leaders, children, youth, and women, extending community driven share-ownership schemes to granite mining and enforcing site remediation should be considered as crucial steps toward the development of sustainability in the mining sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable development initiatives are proliferating in the US and Europe as engineering educators seek to provide students with knowledge and skills to design technologies that are environmentally sustainable. Many such initiatives involve students from the 'North,' or 'developed' world building projects for villages or communities in the 'South.' Sustainable development projects in engineering education are being lauded for meeting multiple educational outcomes and providing students with important international training. This paper argues that such programmes need to educate students to think critically about their role as development professionals, to understand and value the role of community in development projects, and to develop long-term assessment criteria for such projects. It argues that engineering educators need to meaningfully engage the 'community' in sustainable community development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In October 2007, Norman Borlaug wrote in Science magazine that 'more than 200 science journals throughout the world will simultaneously publish papers on global poverty and human development - a collaborative effort to increase awareness, interest, and research about these important issues of our time'. Borlaug, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and father of the green revolution, was demonstrating that the scientific community is at last taking questions seriously of sustainability and development. Borlaug's own contentious role in the history of 'development,' however, points to the complexity of the term and the contested role scientists and engineers have played in that history. As engineering education initiatives incorporating sustainable development practices proliferate, it becomes ever more important to understand the historical lessons of development and the contributions of engineers. This paper outlines a history of engineering practice and education in relationship to development, sustainable development, and community development to help those committed to making engineering education relevant to environmental protection and community needs to better understand the challenges ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“Economies in Transition” (hereafter EIT or EITs) are countries in the process of shifting from “command” to “more open”, liberalized, free market economic systems. In addition to achieving major structural adjustments to their economies, the transformational process requires the introduction of a high degree of transparency in both the economic and political spheres of society. The transfer of state assets to private ownership is one part of the process as well, as is the creation or opening of “political space” that permits the emergence of private enterprise, multiparty political systems, and the introduction of a broad range of non-governmental organizations that carry out missions and functions which people themselves prefer to perform. Thus, the process of economic transformation requires a major socio-political-economic paradigm shift...one that places people and their needs at the center of the transformational process. The process is extremely difficult to achieve and is fraught with many dangers for countries that enter into it without substantial guidance from more economically advanced countries. This paper reports on the social development successes and failures of 31 economies in transition over the 15-year period 1990–2005. Included in the analysis are EITs located in East and South East Asia ( N = 5), Central and Eastern Europe ( N = 10), all 12 members of the Commonwealth of Independent States including the Russian Federation ( N = 12), Turkey ( N = 1), and the three Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania ( N = 3). Using the author’s extensively pre-tested Weighted Index of Social Progress (WISP), the paper reports data at three levels of analysis: (1) WISP performances for all 31 EITs-as-a-group; (2) sub-regional performances on the WISP and its component sub-indexes for each of the six EIT sub-regions included in the analysis; and (3) country-specific performances on the WISP for each of the 31 countries included in the analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an understanding of the effectiveness of the sustainable livelihoods approach in development. The article begins with a background to the sustainable livelihoods approach (SLA) outlining its origins. Using the DFID's framework, the article further explains why the SLA can only be seen as an approach and not as a theory. The article uses the example of South Africa during the settler colonial period to illustrate the importance of structures and processes in the allocation of resources. Apartheid South Africa is used to illustrate how institutions can stifle development instead of promoting it, and therefore set in the conditions of underdevelopment. In this regard, the article argues that the settler colonial regime in South Africa embarked on a deliberate and purposive exercise to underdevelop the indigenous African populations. In the analysis, the paper shows how the various areas of the sustainable livelihoods framework contribute to achieve specific livelihoods outcomes. The article ends with a short criticism of the sustainable livelihoods approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Divergent priorities, interests, and agendas among local and global communities form the core of the conservation versus development debate. The intricate challenges facing humanity in the 21st century demand a more comprehensive approach to analyzing issues and exploring alternative solutions. This article aims to integrate tourism, a burgeoning service industry, into the local???global and conservation???development nexus. It posits tourism as a mutually acceptable common ground for both local and global communities in the conservation and development agenda. Furthermore, this article presents a model illustrating how tourism can serve as a tool for sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper synthesises findings of a recent IAIA Symposium on Resettlement and Livelihoods (South Africa, October 2014). Over 250 practitioners from 42 countries attended, representing governments, private sector, academia, impacted communities, civil society international financial institutions (IFIs) and consultants. Five ‘big’ themes emerged: (1) land access and resettlement practice falls short of community expectations, with negative impacts on livelihoods of displaced people, absence of meaningful involvement by communities in decision-making and inadequate benefits from projects. (2) The best practice standards of IFIs are converging. Countries are also increasingly putting in place legislation, but there remains significant scope to improve legislative frameworks and align them closer with international good practice. (3) Livelihood restoration is not being properly planned or implemented. Finding replacement land is increasingly difficult. Women, youth and the vulnerable need more of a voice and more livelihood support. Livelihood restoration is a long-term process and can be better integrated with broader community development efforts. (4) Projects need to start planning and engagement early and more thoroughly. (5) Resettlement practice is improving but requires more resources. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The welfare partnership is defined as the process through which local agents interact with each other in the dynamics of collectively defining strategic objectives and building place-based approaches that reinforce local citizenship. What can we learn from the experience of municipal social action partnerships that is likely to assist us in building sustainable development formulas? This article analyses the partnership practices in six Portuguese municipalities in the Northern Region, discussing forms of social support that are convergent with sustainable development and how they tend to be articulated in municipal social action partnerships. The present research followed phenomenological reasoning using qualitative methods and multiple case studies. There were debates with professionals, looking for explicit meanings in the abstract knowledge of the concept trajectory. The results suggest that convergence with sustainable development resides in the combination of three elements: (1) developing innovative eco-community social responses that are aligned with a comprehensive social sustainability ideal that is contextualized in the relationship between subjectivities and territory, as well as with the general principles of the providence system; (2) implementing a local strategic planning practice, monitored and aligned with local projects that act on the ecological effect, determining local vulnerabilities; and (3) adopting an efficient practice of governance and allocation of stakeholders and resources, emphasizing the multilevel articulation and durability of the implemented local processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the importance of capacity building aimed at enhancing community participation in the development of tourism in rural areas. The article was undertaken through the employment of a qualitative research approach, using semi-structured interview, which were then analysed using NVivo system, version 11, thereby producing a comprehensive observation report that allowed for presentation and discussion of the findings. The article found a common narrative indicating a chronic lack of capacity within the village to develop tourism that can sustainably support the liveli hood of members of the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In our days clusters and cluster policies have begun to play an increasingly important role in the economic and political environment alike, being mentioned more and more often in relation to new development policies as an easy solution for the complex problems of the economy. For pointing out the "raison d'être" of these approaches, we intend to analyze the specialization and the spatial concentration of economic activities based on a very straight-forward approach for pointing out the intensifying activities of the economy both from a territorial as well as from a sectoral point of view. The topic is all the more important since much of the financial support and state aid going into the economy in the last years has been channeled in the form of financial grants given to specific structures like clusters or competitiveness poles and the tendency does not look like it is about to change. That is why in the present paper we would like to analyze the specialization of the counties in Transylvania and the concentration of the certain industries and try to find a correlation with the clusters which have emerged in the past years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State universities are increasingly being transformed from institutions with traditional teaching and research responsibilities to have a third, societal role in sustainable regional and economic development. In doing so, universities support knowledge spillovers to improve sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems that benefit economic revitalization or further development of regions. At the same time they promote stakeholder involvement in crucial governance processes at the regional level. Based on a comparative case study design building on three cases in Germany, our research analyses these interdependencies focussing on university-linked support programmes for sustainable entrepreneurship and the effects on sustainable regional development. Our findings provide a nuanced view clarifying the different roles universities have, how knowledge spillovers are created, and what outputs, outcomes, and effects are realized at the regional level and beyond. Specifically, we demonstrate that depending on the regional context, different configurations, pathways, and intervention points of universities may equally improve sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2014, United Nations member states proposed a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which will succeed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as reference goals for the international development community for the period 2015-2030. The proposed goals and targets can be seen as a network, in which links among goals exist through targets that refer to multiple goals. Using network analysis techniques, we show that some thematic areas covered by the SDGs are well connected with one another. Other parts of the network have weaker connections with the rest of the system. The SDGs as a whole are a more integrated system than the MDGs were, which may facilitate policy integration across sectors. However, many of the links among goals that have been documented in biophysical, economic and social dimensions are not explicitly reflected in the SDGs. Beyond the added visibility that the SDGs provide to links among thematic areas, attempts at policy integration across various areas will have to be based on studies of the biophysical, social and economic systems at appropriate scales. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]