Shifting developmentalism vis a vis community sustainability: Can Integration of ecosystem goods and services with microcredit create a local sustainability dispositif?

This paper briefly reviews developmentalisms as evolved over the time especially those that have direct or indirect implications for community level sustainability. It then brings forth the perspective of sustainable development and its characteristics in fostering development at the local community level. It also analyses the multifaceted and changing nature of development and the urgencies thereof from the viewpoints of ecological economics, millennium ecosystem assessment and community level sustainability. Drawing on the Foucault’s notion of ‘dispositif’ it proposes to integrate ecosystem goods and services management objectives within the microcredit mechanism as a new approach to promote sustainability at community level. The paper therefore, argues that a shift in microcredit mechanism (which is regarded as effective for social and economic contributions at grass root level) with the inclusion of ecosystem goods and services management objectives will result a new framework for local sustainability.