How to implement LED?

There are a number of important potential areas of intervention - and intervention strategies for LED. There are different possible initiatives with various tools helping to implement them. LED facilitation can hardly address all kind of initiatives, at least not all in one go. Choosing the initiatives, methods, and tools which are best suited to the local context is a task in itself and depends highly on the local competitive advantages, the stakeholder's preferences, commitments and capacities, as well as available resources.

Basically four fields of action could be differentiated for LED-initiatives (although there are overlaps):

  • Locational Factors that are creating an enabling environment for LED

  • Private Sector Development which is supporting local entrepreneurs

  • Environmental Management which is enhancing the ecological sustainability of LED

  • Enable role players to develop the necessary capacities for LED

Locational Factors

Strengthening the locational factors of an area is a key to strengthening its competitiveness. Locational factors are the criteria which decide on the attractiveness of an area for business. Locational factors rank from "hard" or tangible factors such as the quality of business infrastructure to "soft" or intangible factors such as the general image of a town, and not all factors have the same relevance for all firms.

The task of LED facilitation is to find and foster a meaningful and coherent way to incrementally improve systemic competitiveness of an area. The intervention rank from interventions at the meta level of values and belief systems to the micro level of individual firms. The most relevant inventions to enhance the locational factors in South Africa municipalities are amongst others:

Local Private Sector Development

Economic development is based on the efforts of companies. One of the main target group of local economic development are thus companies, in particular the private sector. Basically, there are three types of business which can be the target of LED:
  • External investors
  • Local companies
  • Start-up companies

It depends on the features of a given location which of these three types is the priority target. External investors are particularly relevant for locations with a weak local company base and little entrepreneurial dynamism. In locations with a strong local economic base, promoting the competitiveness of existing companies is often much more relevant than attracting business/firms.

Specific instruments for the development of the local private sector are:

Environmental Management

Environmental Management focuses on the ecological dimension of development. But it is not about the protection of nature only. With regard to the local economy an environmental management approach can create triple-win situation:

  • Prevention of natural resources eg. reducation of pollutions, protection of animals and plants

  • Creation of new business opportunities, reduction of production costs, and increased productivity

  • Improved living conditions, enhanced awareness on environmental issues, strengthening culture values, and - last but not least - more jobs.

For the management of natural resources the promotion of   communication and coordination among various agencies on local, regional and national level and among community is needed. The economic sustainability of these efforts is a major issue. Therefore, initiatives for natural resource management can transform into LED-initiatives and vice versa natural resource management can easily become part of existing LED-programmes.

In the following approaches could be among others applied in different environment - local communities, industry and service sector:

  • Community-based Natural Resource Management

  • Sustainable Tourism

  • Waste Management

Enabling Role Players

In LED processes the four main role players (public sector, private sector, civil society and intermediary institutions) can be differentiated, each of which has an active and specific role to play. How can interventions be designed and directed to support and capacitate these actors and thus increase the intensity and quality of their contributions to the LED process? Different concepts, strategies and tools can assist in enhancing the understanding, awareness and capacity of local stakeholders around LED in order to enable them to participate and interact more effectively. Interventions Areas and strategies that enable this rolepayer focus on the following aspects:

  • Awareness raising for LED

  • Introducing approaches and tools for LED

  • Capacity Building on LED concept and roles

  • Networking activities between and within the roleplayer groups

  • Building organisational capacity

  • Clarification of institutional mechanisms and roles for LED promotion

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