A great deal has been written about how the tendency to view "communities" as homogeneous entities has undermined awareness of social differentiation, and how this differentiation structures positions of privilege in rural development and natural resource management. Not only do development and extension organizations often fail to design strategies to cater for more marginalized groups; their strategies often favour more outspoken, wealthy or powerful individuals through whom project goals can be more easily obtained. Implicit in the terms "innovative farmer" and "model farmer," for example, is a bias toward those farmers who can afford to take risks (often wealthier households) and those who are most aggressive or outspoken in seeking program benefits (often the most powerful, and more often than not male, farmers).

AHI has been working to develop approaches to enhance access by women and poorer households to technologies, income generating opportunities and natural resources. These have included strategies for gender-equitable technology dissemination and access; a priori negotiation of how benefits from introduced technologies or NRM interventions will be distributed within communities (i.e. between early and late beneficiaries or diverse local interest groups); and strengthening of farmer institutions and watershed organizations for greater accountability and representation. AHI has also piloted stakeholder negotiation processes to ensure that divergent interests are taken into account in resolving watershed problems such as water resource degradation, farm boundary management, managing run-off, and free grazing. Each of these approaches acknowledges that development and natural resource management are inherently political processes that foster positions of privilege vis-à-vis assets and opportunities, requiring mechanisms for effective governance. Key lessons and practices from this work are published in several AHI Briefs and Working Papers.