This empowering aspect of participation, however, is often overlooked by project planners. However, cultural norms, property rights and other social and power relations are often ignored in project design and implementation. Such institutional aspects influence the way natural resources are used by men and women or different ethnic and income groups, as well as how resources are distributed. Projects, programmes and strategies designed in a top-down or uniform manner may well have unanticipated outcomes due to the way different stakeholders intervene in and respond to their implementation. For example, attempts to decentralize natural resource management and conservation have sometimes backfired due to problems of capacity at the local level, or because local elites have diverted or abused resources intended for conservation.
Communities can be very heterogeneous, hierarchical and conflictive.
The broader institutional context Finally, social relations involve not only actors or groups at the local level, but also their interactions with institutions at state, national and international levels. Many sustainable development interventions and strategies, however, have focused too narrowly on the local level. But they have often ignored the broader institutional context. Macro-economic policies, market trends, political elites and national bureaucracies also influence what happens at the local level, often placing severe constraints on what can be achieved. The nature of local level projects is also heavily influenced by donor conditionality.