**2. Standard of living and well-being in CPLP countries**

Theoretical discussions, held at the Mechanism to Facilitate the Participation of Universities in the Food and Nutrition Security Council of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries around the terms quality of life and well-being of the population, have valued the progressive paradigms of the global South [2]. In the same direction, the ancestral paradigms of the peoples originating in Latin America and Africa have also deserved a prominent place [3].

Standard of quality of life and well-being have been debated in the scope of projects aimed at the development of nations. The theory of local development generally asks this question: How to evaluate local actions in favor of development? Orth [4] states the following indicators: first of all, local development is a matter of time; it is to realize that an artificial border exists between the economic and the cultural; Among the cultural factors of local development, four major concerns emerge: identity, quality of life, territorial or community integration and employment.

The concerns of local development are also taken into account by agents of the "theory of community economic development". Its mission is to promote and support this theory for the social, economic and environmental improvement of Canadian communities.

*Community economic development (CED) is defined as a measure taken at the local scale to create economic opportunities and improve the social conditions of communities based on a sustainable and integral basis; particular attention being directed to the most disadvantaged people.*

*A community process run by and for members, the CED is based on an integrated approach to social and economic development, and favors the economic, social, ecological and cultural well-being of communities.*

*CED is a solution to conventional approaches to economic development: the problems faced by communities, specifically unemployment, poverty, job loss, environmental degradation and delinquency, must be addressed in a comprehensive and participatory manner [5].*

An important fact to be mentioned is that the development field is not only a theoretical field, but it is, likewise, a field of development practice, which implies a policy of implementation and evaluation of development actions. In this case, the community economic development values an integrative and participatory approach.

The theory of human development, elaborated by the United Nations Development Program, works in the same direction. It is a theoretical-practical field of development.

*Human development implies the construction of an order of values in which the economic and political dimensions actually become instruments for overcoming material and cultural deprivations of human beings - that is, a new order based on the guarantee of inseparable civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights [6].*

United Nations Development Program conception of development owes much to the Indian economist Amartya Sen. Through these two points of view, development must be treated in its broadest, most human dimension. For Sen [7]: "development is a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy". The author focuses

on human freedoms to contradict the narrower interpretations of development, such as those that identify development with the growth of the (GNP), increased personal incomes, industrialization, technological advancement or social modernization. At the same time, he recognizes that the growth of GNP, or of individual incomes, obviously, can be very important as "means" of expanding the freedoms enjoyed by members of society. However, freedoms depend on other determinants, such as social and economic provisions (for example, education and health services) and civil rights (for example, the freedom to participate in public discussions and inquiries).

Thus, development requires the removal of the main sources of deprivation of liberty: poverty and tyranny, lack of economic opportunities and systematic social destitution, neglect of public services and intolerance or excessive interference by repressive states.

The sustainable development paradigm has sought to bring the appreciation of the environment in addition to quality-of-life indicators linked to economic, social, cultural. Grenier [8], concerned with the establishment of criteria to develop an evaluation and taking the knowledge of native (indigenous) peoples as a reference, defines sustainable development from the view of the World Commission on Environment and Development.

*Sustainable development is a development that responds to current needs without impairing the ability of future generations to respond to their own needs. The sustainable development of agriculture and natural resources represents the use, management and conservation of natural resources and also the orientation of technological changes to ensure the satisfaction of human needs, specifically in food, water, housing, clothing and fuel for current and future generations [...] [8].*

Granier [8] brings in his text nine objectives for sustainable development according to the World Commission on Environment and Development list: 1) leverage for growth; 2) change in the quality of growth; 3) meeting essential needs in matters of employment, food, energy, water and sanitation; 4) maintenance with a viable population level; 5) preservation and care for the resource bases; 6) the reorientation of technology and risk management; 7) the fusion of environmental and economic issues in decision making; 8) reorientation of international economic relations; 9) an increasingly cooperative development.

In dialog with World Commission on Environment and Development and Matowanyika, Grenier [8] shows that sustainable development that takes into account local and national realities is based on the integration of these five variables: biophysical and socioeconomic resources; external factors, such as available technologies and development ideologies; internal factors, including socio-cultural belief systems and local production and technology bases; demographic factors and political and economic factors.

Mamani [9], intellectual indigenous from Bolivia, brings this criticism to the Western paradigm that thinks of development as the growth or increase of something; also understood as evolution. For him, behind the concept of development are the concepts of progress, planning and production which, added to science and technology, constitute a vision of the prevailing reality of the world forged since the second world war. For this author, the word development as a concept and a way of life is totally inherent in "living better".

In this context, Mamani [9] establishes a difference between what he identifies as western anthropocentric paradigms, namely, the individualist paradigm that has the axis of "living better", the collective paradigm, which has much to do with political left, which has as its axis the "well-being of the human being", and the

*Networking and Participatory Research Promoting Quality of Life and Well-Being… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.97730*

ancestral paradigm of the indigenous indigenous peoples. It is a community paradigm that has the "Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir" as its horizon.

*"Vivir Bien/Buen Vivir is life in fullness. It is knowing how to live and know how to coexist in harmony and balance; in harmony with the cycles of Mother Earth, the cosmos, life and history, and balance with all forms of existence, visible and invisible, in permanent respect" [9].*

Instead of being content with the definitions produced by progressive thoughts on food security and food sovereignty, even when well intentioned, Mamani [9] suggests the term "dignified food with identity" to think about public policies for food and nutrition security since the ancestral paradigm of the original peoples. In other words, this means, first, what food should be for everyone, and when it is said for everyone, it is referring to all forms of existence, not only for human beings, but for all beings that inhabit Mother Earth, because here it is conceived that everything is part of the balance of life. When it is said with "identity", it refers to establishing its own forms of food production; with its logic, with its own technologies, which allow people to produce healthy food, to recover healthy seeds as well. All of this makes it possible to maintain the greatest nutritional wealth of food and preserve the land. The principles that apply in this logic are to protect life before the market; and respect for Mother Earth's cycles.

Using the ancestral paradigm of ubuntu, Malomalo [3] states that it is an alternative, proposed from the global South, to face the planetary crisis imposed by capitalist development. He believes that the use of this term, like "Viver bien" [9], is the first step towards decolonization: epistemological decolonization and then other forms of political, economic and cultural decolonization. In this regard, instead of using the term development in an adjective way: alternative development, sustainable development, even though it is within an alternative theoretical repertoire, it is necessary to radicalize the debate using native terms such as ubuntu/bisoity, aiming to establish an epistemological alternative towards new society. Ubuntu also aims to build a human society based on respect for nature and the ancestry of each people.
