Factors that promotes sustainability in Latin America´s local development processes

Abstract

Local development is a concept that is currently addressed from different perspectives and that involves community’s participation involving their endogenous factors to build the visions of the future of their territories. At the same time, Valcárcel and Portillo (1999) recognize the territory as a process in social construction and as a space-project that can be transformed at every moment; However there are some parameters that govern these processes, there is talk of lasting projects that have an impact on social, environmental, economic and political development in communities, just as this is reflected in the Brutland report (1987), the first attempt that world made to end the confrontation between sustainability and development. In the present review article, a reflection was made on these subjects and 35 cases of local development study were identified and geo-referenced in territories with urban and rural characteristics in Latin America in the last 20 years; Of these, 17 cases were selected, in which were identified: durability over time and social, environmental and economic sustainability, in order to recognize which were the main endogenous factors present in the participating communities that allowed to consolidate sustainable local development processes in their territories.