Publication: Social Sustainability and the Development Process: What Is It, Why Does It Matter, and How Can It Be Enhanced?
Loading...
Date
2023-07-10
ISSN
Published
2023-07-10
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Development debates frequently focus on making economic growth sustainable or ensuring that natural resources are used sustainably; such debates rest on longstanding scholarship and largely shared understandings of how such problems should be addressed. Increasingly, there are also calls for development to be socially sustainable. Yet the theory and evidence undergirding this third “pillar” are comparatively thin, focusing primarily on high-income countries and mapping only partially onto a coherent policy agenda. This paper seeks to help close these gaps by providing (a) a brief history and literature review of social sustainability, emphasizing its distinctiveness from economic and environmental sustainability; (b) a definition and conceptual framework, identifying social sustainability’s key components; (c) empirical evidence linking these components to mainstream development outcomes; and (d) operational insights for promoting social sustainability—on its own and as a complement to economic and environmental sustainability. The scale and intensity of the world’s current development challenges—and their impacts not just on economies and the environment but entire societies—requires a more robust understanding of their social dimensions, what policies and programs should be enacted in response, and how such efforts can be implemented with local legitimacy and sustained politically over time.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Barron, Patrick; Cord, Louise; Cuesta, José; Espinoza, Sabina A.; Larson, Greg; Woolcock, Michael. 2023. Social Sustainability and the Development Process: What Is It, Why Does It Matter, and How Can It Be Enhanced?. Policy Research Working Papers; 10487. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/39972 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Social Sustainability in Development(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-15)All development is about people: the transformative process to equip, link, and enable groups of people to drive change and create something new to benefit society. Development can promote societies where all people can thrive, but the change process can be complex, challenging, and socially contentious. Continued progress toward sustainable development is not guaranteed. The current overlapping crises of COVID-19, climate change, rising levels of conflict, and a global economic slowdown are inflaming long-standing challenges—exacerbating inequality and deep-rooted systemic inequities. Addressing these challenges will require social sustainability in addition to economic and environmental sustainability. Social Sustainability in Development: Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century seeks to advance the concept of social sustainability and sharpen its analytical foundations. The book emphasizes social sustainability’s four key components: social cohesion, inclusion, resilience, and process legitimacy. It posits that •Social sustainability increases when more people feel part of the development process and believe that they and their descendants will benefit from it. •Communities and societies that are more socially sustainable are more willing and able to work together to overcome challenges, deliver public goods, and allocate scarce resources in ways perceived to be legitimate and fair so that all people may thrive over time. By identifying interventions that work to promote the components of social sustainability and highlighting the evidence of their links to key development outcomes, this book provides a foundation for using social sustainability to help address the many challenges of our time.Publication Local Conflict and Development Projects in Indonesia : Part of the Problem or Part of a Solution?(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-04)Drawing on an integrated mixed methods research design, the authors explore the dynamics of the development-conflict nexus in rural Indonesia, and the specific role of development projects in shaping the nature, extent, and trajectories of "everyday" conflicts. They find that projects that give inadequate attention to dispute resolution mechanisms in many cases stimulate local conflict, either through the injection of development resources themselves or less directly by exacerbating preexisting tensions in target communities. But projects that have explicit and accessible procedures for managing disputes arising from the development process are much less likely to lead to violent outcomes. The authors argue that such projects are more successful in addressing project-related conflicts because they establish direct procedures (such as forums, facilitators, and complaints mechanisms) for dealing with tensions as they arise. These direct mechanisms are less successful in addressing broader social tensions elicited by, or external to, the development process, though program mechanisms can ameliorate conflict indirectly through changing norms and networks of interaction.Publication Social Sustainability, Poverty, and Income(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-06)Social sustainability is often poorly understood and vaguely defined, despite growing appreciation of its relevance as a concept. This paper advances the empirical understanding of social sustainability by constructing a global database of 71 indicators across 193 countries and 37 territories between 2016 and 2020. The indicators are flexibly clustered around four dimensions—social inclusion, resilience, social cohesion, and process legitimacy—for which measurement indices are constructed. A simple empirical analysis using the database confirms that social sustainability is positively and strongly associated with per capita income, negatively and strongly associated with poverty, and negatively but weakly associated with income inequality. Much remains to be analyzed to understand the interactions between dimensions, but the results underscore that social sustainability matters not only in itself, but also to reduce poverty. Furthermore, extending access to markets, basic public services, and social assistance needs to be complemented with strengthening process legitimacy and social cohesion if inequality is to be reduced.Publication A Learning Agenda for Community-Driven Development(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-08-28)Governments and nongovernmental organizations around the world utilize Community-Driven Development (CDD) approaches to address complex and overlapping development challenges. Despite consistent evidence on some impacts of CDD—especially improvements in basic services—there is significant variation in most outcomes and several unanswered questions. This paper argues that the central task to advance learning on CDD (and similar complex development interventions) is identifying the conditions under which it works and the design and implementation choices that will make it most effective within a given context. The paper provides an overview of CDD, background on the existing evidence, and identifies gaps in CDD’s impact across four broad types of outcomes—cohesion, inclusion, resilience, and process legitimacy. The paper concludes by outlining a set of priority research questions that will advance learning on CDD and provides guidance on the empirical approaches and tools required to answer these research questions. The proposed learning agenda focuses on understanding variations in project design, implementation modalities, and context, arguing that increased knowledge in these domains will help to optimize the impacts of current CDD projects, inform the design of new projects, and develop an understanding of what project designs are most scalable in different contexts.Publication Inclusion Matters in Africa(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020)Africa has garnered global attention for its many achievements and its dynamism, and at the same time, it has taken the spotlight for its substantial challenges. As in other parts of the world, positive developments have been uneven in Africa. This report places the notion of social inclusion in an analysis of Africa’s achievements and challenges. Its interdisciplinary approach uses evidence to bring empirical weight to issues that are often debated through advocacy and contestation. It also contributes to the priority areas of a new regional strategy for the Africa region of the World Bank by focusing on women’s empowerment, digital technology, fragility, and climate change, among others. The report asks, in the wake of the advances Africa has made over the years, who is excluded, from what, how, and why. It then highlights what has been attempted in the quest of African countries for social inclusion. One of the main contributions of this report is that while grounded in the experience of African countries, it shows that Africa’s challenges in social inclusion are not unique or exceptional. It highlights examples of the remarkable innovations that abound in Africa and of the policy and programmatic movement towards social inclusion. It surmises that social inclusion must be based on a clear social contract that recognizes both the costs and benefits of policies and interventions towards social inclusion.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication The Power of Survey Design : A User's Guide for Managing Surveys, Interpreting Results, and Influencing Respondents(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2006)The vast majority of data used for economic research, analysis, and policy design comes from surveys-surveys of households, firms, schools, hospitals, and market participants, and, the accuracy of the estimate will depend on how well the survey is done. This innovative book is both a 'how-to' go about carrying out high-quality surveys, especially in the challenging environment of developing countries, and a 'user's guide' for anyone who uses statistical data. Reading this book will provide data users with a wealth of insight into what kinds of problems, or biases to look for in different data sources, based on the underlying survey approaches that were used to generate the data. In that sense the book is an invaluable 'skeptics guide to data'. Yet, the broad storyline of the book is something that should be absorbed by statistical data users. The book will teach and show how difficult it often is to obtain reliable estimates of important social and economic facts, and, therefore encourages you to approach all estimates with sensible caution.Publication Supporting Youth at Risk(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008)The World Bank has produced this policy Toolkit in response to a growing demand from our government clients and partners for advice on how to create and implement effective policies for at-risk youth. The author has highlighted 22 policies (six core policies, nine promising policies, and seven general policies) that have been effective in addressing the following five key risk areas for young people around the world: (i) youth unemployment, underemployment, and lack of formal sector employment; (ii) early school leaving; (iii) risky sexual behavior leading to early childbearing and HIV/AIDS; (iv) crime and violence; and (v) substance abuse. The objective of this Toolkit is to serve as a practical guide for policy makers in middle-income countries as well as professionals working within the area of youth development on how to develop and implement an effective policy portfolio to foster healthy and positive youth development.Publication World Development Report 2019(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2019)Work is constantly reshaped by technological progress. New ways of production are adopted, markets expand, and societies evolve. But some changes provoke more attention than others, in part due to the vast uncertainty involved in making predictions about the future. The 2019 World Development Report will study how the nature of work is changing as a result of advances in technology today. Technological progress disrupts existing systems. A new social contract is needed to smooth the transition and guard against rising inequality. Significant investments in human capital throughout a person’s lifecycle are vital to this effort. If workers are to stay competitive against machines they need to train or retool existing skills. A social protection system that includes a minimum basic level of protection for workers and citizens can complement new forms of employment. Improved private sector policies to encourage startup activity and competition can help countries compete in the digital age. Governments also need to ensure that firms pay their fair share of taxes, in part to fund this new social contract. The 2019 World Development Report presents an analysis of these issues based upon the available evidence.Publication Zimbabwe(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-03-01)This report presents an assessment of Zimbabwe’s agriculture sector disaster risk and management capacity. The findings indicate that Zimbabwe is highly exposed to agricultural risks and has limited capacity to manage risk at various levels. The report shows that disaster-related shocks along Zimbabwe’s agricultural supply chains directly translate to volatility in agricultural GDP. Such shocks have a substantial impact on economic growth, food security, and fiscal balance. When catastrophic disasters occur, the economy absorbs the shocks, without benefiting from any instruments that transfer the risk to markets and coping ability. The increasing prevalence of ‘shock recovery-shock’ cycles impairs Zimbabwe’s ability to plan and pursue a sustainable development path. The findings presented here confirm that it is highly pertinent for Zimbabwe to strengthen the capacity to manage risk at various levels, from the smallholder farmer, to other participants along the supply chain, to consumers (who require a reliable, safe food supply), and ultimately to the government to manage natural disasters. The assessment provides the following evidence on sources of risks and plausible risk management solutions. It is our hope that the report contributes to action by the Government of Zimbabwe to adopt a proactive and integrated risk management strategy appropriate to the current structure of the agricultural sector.Publication Ten Steps to a Results-Based Monitoring and Evaluation System : A Handbook for Development Practitioners(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004)An effective state is essential to achieving socio-economic and sustainable development. With the advent of globalization, there are growing pressures on governments and organizations around the world to be more responsive to the demands of internal and external stakeholders for good governance, accountability and transparency, greater development effectiveness, and delivery of tangible results. Governments, parliaments, citizens, the private sector, Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs), civil society, international organizations, and donors are among the stakeholders interested in better performance. As demands for greater accountability and real results have increased, there is an attendant need for enhanced results-based monitoring and evaluation of policies, programs, and projects. This handbook provides a comprehensive ten-step model that will help guide development practitioners through the process of designing and building a results-based monitoring and evaluation system. These steps begin with a 'readiness assessment' and take the practitioner through the design, management, and importantly, the sustainability of such systems. The handbook describes each step in detail, the tasks needed to complete each one, and the tools available to help along the way.