PLA 53: Tools for influencing power and policy

December 2005
Guest editor: Sonja Vermeulen

This edition of Participatory Learning and Action is guest-edited by Sonja Vermeulen with articles written by eight partners from the Power Tools project.

Many people's lives involve the day-to-day management of natural resources. Such intimate interaction creates awareness of the technical, social and political obstacles to good management. Yet many of these people never have the opportunity to contribute to the definition of policies and institutions that govern their use of natural resources. The policy gap between the powerful and marginalised does not just involve the lack of available channels for participatory dialogue. Even when such channels exist, communication may fail due to fundamental differences in perception, expression and power between groups.

The Power Tools initiative set out to develop, test and circulate existing and new tools to bridge some of the key gaps in policy processes and content. These policy tools - tips, tactics and approaches - are designed to provide some practical help to people working to improve the policies and institutions that govern access to and use of natural resources.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. Content can be freely reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided the source is fully acknowledged.

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