Rural Development

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The majority of the world’s poor live in rural areas, and are directly dependent on the interaction of innumerable social and biophysical factors for their livelihoods. The challenge of rural development is to assist the community build system resilience, the ability to adsorb shocks and bounce back, or move to a new state, particularly now in the face of climate uncertainty. 

Rural development is thus an interdisciplinary activity underpinned by knowledge and experience with:
  • soils, water, forests, fisheries and the bio-diversity that underpins these. 
  • policies, governance, education, health, training and gender issues
  • physical infrastructure; rural water supply, irrigation feeder roads and processing facilities  
  • value chain analysis; processing, marketing, logistics, technical services, credit and input supply.  
Women often provide most rural labour on small farms and often have the most interest in the long term future of their land and in capacity development of their families and yet are under represented in community decision making. 

With more than 50% of the population now residing in cities, rural development has become the poor cousin of development although most food production in the world still comes from small farms. This may be changing as in recent times, the link between rural development and effective adaptation to and mitigation of the effects of human induced climatic change in rural areas has become increasingly obvious.

Indeed in IID’s view new investment in rural development can and will likely make a substantial contribution to reducing green house gases while improving livelihoods through Carbon Bio-Sequestration. Indeed if livelihoods are not adequately considered in investments to reduce emissions, sequester carbon and improve bio-diversity conservation through reduced deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) investments then they will likely ultimately fail.    

IID has always had a strong focus on rural development and its members have extensive experience in rural development in more than 40 countries in Asia, Africa and the Pacific over the last 30 years. More details are included here.

IID provides services with respect to the conduct of (feasibility) studies, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and the provision of strategic advice and policy development related to rural development.

IID conducts risk management evaluations and studies, particularly targeted assisting local and regional governments to prepare communities to reduce their vulnerability to natural disasters and risks to their natural resource base from various hazards including climate.