Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
3.1 RURAL
LIVELIHOODS AND
SUSTAINABLE
COMMUNITIES
Rural Poverty, Vulnerability
and Development
Despite recent figures from United Nations Habitat, which state that
the global population is becoming increasingly urban, rural poverty
and agriculture continue to remain at the heart of global development
agendas, particularly as the proportion of the world's poorest people
living in rural areas has continued to increase in many countries of
the global South. In fact, levels of rural poverty continue to outstrip
urban poverty, with higher proportions of the 'poorest of the poor' liv-
ing in rural rather than urban areas. Recent figures suggest that
three out of every four poor individuals are rural (World Bank, 2007)
and 70 per cent of the 1.4 billion people living in extreme poverty
reside in rural areas, a situation that is particularly marked in South
Asia and sub-Saharan Africa (International Fund for Agricultural
Development (IFAD), 2010).
Rural poverty is complex and multidimensional, and may be linked
to a wide range of structural factors such as the unequal distribution of
land ownership or tenure, urban bias of development policies, a neolib-
eral system that prioritizes export crops over domestic food production,
global market fluctuations in primary commodity prices, political insta-
bility, and external shocks like natural hazards or long-term climate
change. In recent years, increasing recognition has also been paid to the
agency of households to respond to structural problems by employing a
diverse range of livelihood and coping strategies to counteract poverty
and risk, where risk is defined as the 'likelihood of being faced with
Search WWH ::




Custom Search