**6. Concluding thoughts**

Development is often linked with economic prosperity. However, development is a much broader concept incorporating many aspects such as economics, resource distribution, culture, health, politics and questions of poverty, inequality and the way in which the world is structured. Prosperity is important but the question of who gets the prosperity and who has the potential for it is also vital.

A salient issue with regards development is the gender dimension. Historically, women have not participated in the process, design and management of development in many regions. Women have not been involved, or rather permitted to participate, in designing policies for increasing literacy, economic resources and providing social services. The cost of major shifts in development policies have been borne by women, with women constituting a vast majority of the poor.

Some important aspects to living better lives are better health policies, education and food which simply highlight the need for better incomes. Many global issues impede development. Weak and corrupt governments that are incapable of delivering the kind of services needed for development constitute a major challenge. Many countries have suffered, or are suffering, from internal wars and conflicts which constitute immerse problems for development because people's livelihoods are interrupted and government cannot provide essential services to aid development. Indeed, development can go badly if it is done the corrupt way and some development have very bad environmental consequences.

The most pressing development concerns are situations where decisions are made by small elite, fostering development that is not democratic. This yields a development that is *for the people,* but not *by the people*. This calls for a need for citizen participation in the development process.
