Robin Mearns
I moved from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) to the World Bank in 1997, just after the Bank’s social development network was formally created. The social development agenda had been gradually evolving in the Bank over the preceding two decades, initially within the agriculture and rural development department, and later intertwined with the emergence of environmental concerns within the Bank (Davis 2004; Koch‑Weser and Guggenheim 2021; Wade 1997). But it would take considerably longer for social scientists to gain critical mass in the Bank and achieve significant operational influence and impact.1 In this brief addendum I shed light on how the contributions to knowledge encapsulated in this IDS Bulletin archive issue have also influenced development in practice, viewed through the lens of my own experience at the World Bank.
A throughline from the kind of critical thinking and writings on environment and development emanating from IDS and elsewhere in the 1990s – focusing on social dimensions, communities, resources, and livelihoods, and challenging dominant narratives – can be traced to several interrelated strands of analytical and operational engagement within the World Bank. Three discernible themes have since converged, not least in the context of responses to the global climate crisis.
First was an emphasis from the outset on participatory approaches in rural development and natural resource management, inspired by the work of Robert Chambers, Neville Dyson-Hudson, Norman Uphoff and others (Cernea 1985). This later led to a focus on the social and institutional dimensions of land and natural resource tenure, management, and policy, which influenced a new generation of operations in forestry, protected area management, pastoral land tenure, and resource access (Bruce and Mearns 2002; Ribot and Mearns 2005).
Second was the importance of participatory, qualitative and mixed-methods approaches in understanding the lived experiences of people living in poverty (Narayan et al. 2000) and of building on local-level institutions and social capital as a foundational basis for durable change (Bebbington et al. 2004, 2006). These twin threads came together to inform what has since become a very substantial global portfolio of community-driven and local development operations and programmes.2 Such programmes often unfold in phases over one or two decades, beginning by piloting locally-led initiatives that are later scaled up and mainstreamed into domestic laws and policies for enduring impact. Guggenheim (2021) describes one such programme in Indonesia. Another was the Mongolia Sustainable Livelihoods Program (SLP), which I led on behalf of the World Bank in its early years. The design of the SLP was informed by a participatory poverty assessment conducted in 2000 (Mearns 2004) and other analytical underpinnings, including collaborative research that Jeremy Swift and I had carried out from IDS with a group of key Mongolian researchers in the early 1990s (Swift and Mearns 1993). Several of these researchers later became instrumental in delivering results under the SLP and the index-based livestock insurance scheme it spawned (e.g. Skees and Enkh-Amgalan 2002), underscoring the importance of partnerships, as Leach and Scoones highlight in their introduction to this archive issue.
Third, as the World Bank ramped up efforts to tackle the global climate crisis, particularly after the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) COP13 in Bali in 2007, work also began to define an agenda focused on the social dimensions of climate change, in collaboration with various external partners (Mearns and Norton 2010). We framed this as an issue of social justice, seeking to address the needs of those most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, and to centre their voices and priorities in the shaping of climate action. This work built on foundations laid under the other two broad strands of analytical and operational engagement identified above. A significant and growing share of the Bank’s community and local development portfolio, for example, now supports locally-led climate action in Africa, East and South Asia, and small island states in the Caribbean and Pacific regions, and is expected to contribute to strengthening community resilience for around half a billion people by 2030.
As Leach and Scoones note in their introduction to this archive issue, we now live in a world of multiple intersecting crises, in which it is imperative to find ways for people, nature, and the planet to thrive together. The urgency of this challenge has indeed moved concerns with the climate and environment from the margins to the mainstream of development in practice. Many of the recurrent themes in this archive issue resonate even more strongly in the World Bank today than ever before. Engaged partnerships with researchers, thought leaders, and civil society spanning the global South and North continue to be essential in this collective search for socially just solutions for a liveable planet.
Bebbington, A.; Guggenheim, S.; Olson, E. and Woolcock, M. (2004) ‘Exploring Social Capital Debates at the World Bank’, Journal of Development Studies 40.5: 33–64
Bebbington, A.; Woolcock M.; Guggenheim, S. and Olson, E. (eds) (2006) The Search for Empowerment: Social Capital as Idea and Practice at the World Bank, Bloomfield CT: Kumarian Press
Bruce, J.W. and Mearns, R. (2002) Natural Resource Management and Land Policy in Developing Countries: Lessons Learned and New Challenges for the World Bank, Drylands Issue Paper 115, London: International Institute for Environment and Development
Cernea, M.M. (ed.) (1985, updated and expanded 1991) Putting People First: Sociological Variables in Rural Development, Washington DC: Oxford University Press for The World Bank
Davis, G. (2004) A History of the Social Development Network in the World Bank, 1973–2002, Social Development Papers 56, Washington DC: The World Bank
Guggenheim, S. (2021) ‘Putting People First in Practice: Indonesia and the Kecamatan Development Program’, in M. Koch‑Weser and S. Guggenheim (eds), Social Development in the World Bank: Essays in Honor of Michael M. Cernea, Cham, Switzerland: Springer
Koch-Weser, M. and Guggenheim, S. (eds) (2021) Social Development in the World Bank: Essays in Honor of Michael M. Cernea, Cham, Switzerland: Springer
Mearns, R. (2004) ‘Sustaining Livelihoods on Mongolia’s Pastoral Commons: Insights from a Participatory Poverty Assessment’, Development and Change 35.1: 107–39
Mearns, R. and Norton, A. (eds) (2010) Social Dimensions of Climate Change: Equity and Vulnerability in a Warming World, Washington DC: The World Bank
Narayan, D.; Chambers, R.; Kaul Shah, M. and Petesch, P. (2000) Voices of the Poor: Can Anyone Hear Us?, New York NY: Oxford University Press
Ribot, J. and Mearns, R. (2005) Steering Community Driven Development? A Desk Study of NRM Choices. Market Access and Institutional Choice, Working Paper 38, Washington DC: World Resources Institute
Skees, J.R. and Enkh-Amgalan, A. (2002) Examining the Feasibility of Livestock Insurance in Mongolia, Policy Research Working Paper 2886, Washington DC: The World Bank
Swift, J. and Mearns, R. (eds) (1993) ‘Pastoralism in Mongolia’, Special Issue of Nomadic Peoples 33
Wade, R.H. (1997) ‘Greening the Bank: The Struggle Over the Environment, 1970–1995’, in D. Kapur, J. Lewis and R. Webb (eds), The World Bank: Its First Half Century, Washington DC: The Brookings Institution
© 2025 The Author. IDS Bulletin © Institute of Development Studies | DOI: 10.19088/1968-2025.116
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited and any modifications or adaptations are indicated.
The IDS Bulletin is published by Institute of Development Studies, Library Road, Brighton, BN1 9RE, UK. This article is part of IDS Bulletin Vol. 56 No. 1A January 2025 ‘Environmental Change, Development Challenges – Revisited’; the Introduction is also recommended reading.