Sustainable Livelihoods Foundation

The article analyses the policy engagement component of a research project on climate resilience in vulnerable communities that took place in Cape Town, South Africa. Conducted in 2022, the engagement included community and stakeholder events in three research sites, and a cross-cutting policy event with municipal officials, held at the end of the project. Importantly, this policy engagement process occurred in a context of political marginalisation, that is, one characterised by low trust, and little meaningful representation or even communication between these vulnerable communities and the city. This article examines the impact of policy engagement on political relations between local government and vulnerable communities. The overall methodology of the article is qualitative, using an illustrative case-study research design to unpack the subjective experiences of both government officials and residents of vulnerable communities. Primary data included many primary documents, direct observation of the engagements and post-event interviews. First, the engagement process created new 'invented' spaces for the representation of community perspectives to the city, and the city's perspective to the community. Second, the engagement facilitated community self-representation through educating community members to advocate for their ideas in these new invented spaces. Third, this engagement tended to be more constructive and deliberative than polarising and confrontational. Drawing on the theoretical framework of 'political mediation', the policy engagement process is characterised as a positive instance of democratic mediation through 'empowered representation', with some specified limitations.

Public and community engagement in health science research: Openings and obstacles for listening and responding in the majority world Community engagement is recognized as a valuable and ethical component of health science research and its inclusion is increasingly becoming a prerequisite for research funding and approvals (1-5). In general terms, community engagement aims to foster the interchange of perspectives, opinions, and ideas and promote the co-production of knowledge between researchers, research participants, and other stakeholders (6). Community engagement initiatives are often designed with the intention of enabling exchanges of this nature.

ABSTRACTThere is a growing body of literature describing conceptual frameworks for working with participatory visual methods (PVM). Through a global health lens, this paper examines some key themes within these frameworks. We reflect on our experiences of working with with an array of PVM to engage community members in Vietnam, Kenya, the Philippines and South Africa in biomedical research and public health. The participants that we have engaged in these processes live in under-resourced areas with high prevalence of communicable and non-communicable diseases. Our paper describes some of the challenges that we have encountered while using PVM to foster knowledge exchange, build relationships and facilitate change among individuals and families, community members, health workers, biomedical scientists and researchers. We consider multiple ethical situations that have arisen through our work and discuss the ways in which we have navigated and negotiated them. We offer our reflections and learning from facilitating these processes and in doing so we add novel contributions to ethical framework concepts.

Abstract This chapter aims to help identify how the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) could potentially constrain government action to achieve food security in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). It considers the potential impact of the proposed tariff and subsidy reduction modalities of the current round of WTO negotiations. The main focus is on the possible direct effects of the AoA, in terms of proposed reductions to domestic subsidies and tariffs, on food security in SADC countries. The chapter contends that while the potential impact of tariff reductions is minimal, given the LDC status of several countries in the SADC grouping and the extent of ‘water’ in the current country tariff structures, the longer term impact on food security policy options of SADC members is of greater concern. The chapter further highlights the comparatively low levels of public investment in the agricultural sector and the significant reductions of state support which have taken place over the past decade as a consequence of economic liberalization. It argues that the low level of investment in agriculture poses a significant threat to future regional food security.