Participation and Social Capital in Sustainable Land Management: Lessons Learned from International Landcare

Sustainable Land Management addresses the overutilisation and the under-maintenance of natural resources, and accounts for negative external environmental costs. Scale issues pose a challenge for sustainable land management. To be effective, often these practices must operate at the landscape level. This paper argues that participatory sustainable land management that attempts to build social capital among groups of resource users, can attempt to achieve sustainable landscape management. The paper briefly canvases the lessons that can be learned regarding the reported benefits of PSLM, as well as potential strategies for fostering this process. Criticisms of inappropriate participation are highlighted. The relevance to SLM of building social capital among resource users is discussed, and strategies for building social capital identified. Lessons learned from the experience of three countries involved in international Landcare, viz. Australia, South Africa and the Philippines, are utilised to inform the discussion on how APEC economies might address the issue of scale in SLM, and build or strengthen national PLSM programs.