the local agenda initiative envisaged sustainability being built from the bottom up through initiatives by local governments community groups and women and men it stimulated a plethora of communitybased and joint statelocal sustainable development projects and programmes across the world around sustainable agriculture and land use water fisheries forests wildlife urban environments and other issues these initiatives embodied important recognition of local resource rights and collective action yet many suffered from an overly homogeneous view of the community that failed to account for sociallyand genderdifferentiated perspectives and priorities dressier and others leach mearns and scoones or involved women only in a tokenistic manner in project management committees