This folder on training for sustainability contains eight booklets, which are designed to be used together, and share a common framework and key principles. Four linked steps are seen as key to understanding sustainable and equitable development:
À Wholeness. People are an important part of the ecosystem and people/environment interactions are poorly understood;
À Asking Questions. We cannot assess anything unless we know which questions to ask;
À Reflective Institutions. The context for the questioning approach is institutional, andà.
À People Focussed. People are both the problem and the solution and the principal arena for action lies in influencing the motivation for human behavior.
The series starts with the summary document, Overview of Methods, Tools and Field Experiences: Assessing Progress Towards Sustainability. The other seven volumes fall into three sets:
Methods of system assessment (people and the ecosystem)
À Participatory and Reflective Analytical Mapping (PRAM)
À Assessing Rural Sustainability
À Planning Action for Rural Sustainability
Methods of self assessment (for organisations and communities to examine their own attitudes, capacities and experiences)
À Reflective Institutions
Tools (for use in conjunction with any of the methods or with other methods)
À Barometer of Sustainability
À Community-Based Indicators
À Questions of Survival
Methods and tools may well have to be adapted to local circumstances and solutions must be people focussed to be sustained.