Rural development

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As rural development , including rural development , the development of the will rural areas with the aim of the living conditions of the rural population to improve, respectively.

meaning

In general, the standard of living in rural areas is often lower and the level of development less than in urban areas. The industrial and service sectors are mostly concentrated in the cities, while agriculture plays an important role in rural areas . Often there is a lack of jobs and prospects in rural areas, which leads to the emigration of young people in particular to the cities ( rural exodus ). In developing countries, rural refugees often end up in urban slums , where conditions are hardly better. If the disparities between urban and rural areas are very large, this can also harbor the potential for conflict.

As 80% of the hungry in the world live in rural areas (50% small farmers , 22% landless farm workers , 8% fishermen , ranchers , etc.), the fight against world hunger and poverty must also focus on rural areas. Rural development therefore enjoys high priority in development aid and development policy . In the Agenda 21 of the United Nations rural development (taking rural development ) play a key role.

A sub-theme of rural development is village development , with a focus on the smallest regional centers, and urban development appropriate to the surrounding area . The overarching framework is the regional development , which takes care of larger urban as well as rural areas.

Measures to promote rural development

While the importance of rural development is largely undisputed, it is very controversial which measures are suitable for promoting it and in which direction the development of rural areas should go.

Subsidies

One way of promoting rural development is to subsidize rural areas and their development by the state and, in particular, by means of funds from the cities. This model has been practiced with success in Switzerland, for example, since around 1925. Here the state invested large sums in the expansion of infrastructure , education and social security and in the modernization of agriculture in the poorer mountain cantons .

The subsidy model does, however, attract criticism, for example when doubts arise about the efficient use of the funds made available. It is also feared that subsidies can paralyze the initiative and innovation of the rural population themselves. In developing countries there is usually a lack of funds for subsidies, so that the relevant tasks are partly taken over by international aid organizations .

Creation of location advantages

Another possibility is to make rural areas attractive for investments by creating artificial location advantages. This is mainly done through tax breaks. This model criticizes the fact that in this way rural areas gain “unjust” advantages over the cities, that the principle of “fair” taxation is sometimes undermined, that tax evasion is promoted and that ultimately a “race to the bottom” is triggered which is ruinous for city and country will.

Structural reforms

Structural reforms in rural areas are now being propagated primarily for developing countries, where not only the differences between urban and rural areas, but also the social contrasts within rural areas are much more extreme than in industrialized countries . The majority of the small farmers and landless people , who often live in great poverty , are usually opposed to a wealthy minority of large landowners . They often leave a large part of their lands fallow and hardly invest the profits they generate in agriculture or in the further development of the area.

That is why there are efforts to reform land in many developing countries , but these are usually only implemented slowly. Land reform alone does not guarantee success either.

Rural Development Goals

It is generally recognized that rural development should improve the living conditions of the rural population and create long-term prospects for them. However, there are very different opinions about how exactly this development should look. While some strive for a " sustainable development " of rural areas with small-scale agriculture based on ecological principles, including the preservation of old cultivated landscapes , others are aiming for a development towards modern, rationalized agriculture and a devaluation of agriculture in favor of an upgrading of industry and services.

Programs and strategies

Europe

The European Union provides the EAFRD program (including LEADER + ), which aims to improve living conditions in rural areas. It also pursues the Local Agenda 21 , which is the regionalized, small-scale implementation of Agenda 21 of the UNCED . The INTERREG program is intended to promote cross-border urban and rural development in Europe in the regions .

Integrated rural development as a development policy strategy

A concept of development policy that was much discussed in the 1970s and 1980s in particular was "Integrated Rural Development" (ILE). Among other things, the aim was to enable impoverished rural residents (as a target group ) to set rural development in motion and, to that extent, to integrate social and economic development. Most ITU projects, however, failed because of the “policy / program dilemma”: The political elites were often not prepared to create the necessary prerequisites for the success of ITU projects, for example through agricultural reform , or even to allow changes. Governments of the recipient countries of ILU aid forbade themselves requests from donor countries to implement reforms as "interference in internal affairs". In addition, there were the difficulties of the complexity of the ITU programs, which wanted to change many things at the same time.

Web links

International:

Germany:

Switzerland:

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Reinhard Wesel: "Integrated rural development" as development policy rhetoric. To criticize a concept that is too demanding . In: Association for the promotion of agriculture and environmental protection in the third world (ed.): From rhetoric to reality. On the crisis of "integrated rural development" in the tropics and subtropics. Social, political, economic and ecological aspects of site-appropriate agriculture (= social science studies on international problems, vol. 156). Breitenbach, Saarbrücken 1991, ISBN 3-88156-505-1 , pp. 105–125, here p. 105.
  2. ↑ Reinhard Wesel: "Integrated rural development" as development policy rhetoric. To criticize a concept that is too demanding . In: Association for the promotion of agriculture and environmental protection in the third world (ed.): From rhetoric to reality. On the crisis of "integrated rural development" in the tropics and subtropics . Breitenbach, Saarbrücken 1991, pp. 105-125, here pp. 106-107.
  3. ↑ Reinhard Wesel: "Integrated rural development" as development policy rhetoric. To criticize a concept that is too demanding . In: Association for the promotion of agriculture and environmental protection in the third world (ed.): From rhetoric to reality. On the crisis of "integrated rural development" in the tropics and subtropics . Breitenbach, Saarbrücken 1991, pp. 105–125, here p. 117.
  4. ↑ Reinhard Wesel: "Integrated rural development" as development policy rhetoric. To criticize a concept that is too demanding . In: Association for the promotion of agriculture and environmental protection in the third world (ed.): From rhetoric to reality. On the crisis of "integrated rural development" in the tropics and subtropics . Breitenbach, Saarbrücken 1991, pp. 105–125, here p. 113.