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Main presentation

Main presentation

The Devinc Research Project focuses on Development Incomes (DI), namely on financial amounts drawn from the exploitation of natural resources and allocated to riverine communities with a view to invest in sustainable development. The major objective is to assess social and economic impacts generated by DI projects which are financed by private companies from the sectors of mining, forestry and ecotourism in West and Central Africa.

Firstly, the research aims at knowing better about local strategies vis-à-vis DI, either at the level of household budgets or at that of DI management committees.

Then, relying on the inputs from Anthropology of Economics and Social Economy as well as on the collaboration of local actors, researchers will tackle the construction of locally sound criteria/indicators of development and well-being.

Apprehending development policy making through such a dynamic interplay with the communities will contribute to adapt policy practice.

About developmental Incomes

Developmental Income (DI) include any sort of financial mechanism issued from the capitalist exploitation of natural resources and designed as a lever for local development, whether it is activated by the locals or by alien stakeholders (developmentalist or environmentalist agencies and public government entities on one hand; promotors from the private sector, see local NGOs and charity associations, on the other hand).

 

Those amounts are liberated for the sustainable development of riverside populations, following procedures implicating a management that (in theory) is decentralized, participatory and community based. Very little research has focused on DI so far.

 We have identified seven types of DI so far and related them to the main stakeholder they respectively implicate: three of them will be studied by Devinc Researchers (#2, #5, #7)

 

# Types of Developmental Incomes (DI) Main implicated stakeholder
1 Incomes from community forestry and community hunting Local communities (as entrepreneurs)
2 Decentralized taxation of logging and hunting revenue Public Governmental Entities (PGE)
3 Incomes from Protected Areas (added value in PA management) Environmentalist agencies + PGE
4 Community-based payment for environmental services funding Public Governmental Entities (PGE)
5 Corporate social responsibility mechanisms The private sector
6 Compensation plans (for land and resources) and livelihood restoration programs implemented for project impacted people The private sector (extraction Cies, agro industrial production projects)
7 Income (through salaries) drawn from the accommodation component of the touristic sector Hybrid association of public, private and donor’s sector (as investors)