ABOUT US – Our guiding principles

Our services aim to combine human and natural resources for sustainable development. Our work is process-oriented and based on partnership, participation, institutional pluralism, and subsidiarity. Our work is geared by the following guiding principles:

1. Development co-operation means intervening in ongoing processes and consciously steering them. Planning must be based on an indepth knowledge of the ecological, economic, social and institutional processes and systems and the interplay between them, and the synergies which arise. In each individual instance the prevailing circumstances are taken as the starting point.

2. Planning for the future means making every effort to take into account both the ecological and the economic interests of the present and future generations. Activities are moulded by the need to achieve sustainability.

3. Sustainable management of natural resources is only possible if a consensus can be reached among local people. The major stakeholders must participate actively in planning, implementing and monitoring the project.

4. The vertical integration and networking of everybody involved, from national decision-makers to the local population, is crucial for successful programme consultancy.

5. The alarming acceleration in the rate of destruction of tropical forests and the concomittant problems cannot be solved by isolated forestry activities. They demand interdisciplinary, supra-sectoral approaches.

6. Planning in a system which is as complex and dynamic as the natural environment must be flexible and must promote diversity and development options in the ecological and social domains.