Land Reform, Agriculture, Rural Development

Commission on Sustainable Development
Reference
E/CN.17/2009/19
[Arabic] [Chinese] [English] [French] [Russian] [Spanish] 17th session of the Commission on Sustainable Development
E/CN.17/2009/19 - Rural development

7. The achievement of the Millennium Development Goals is at the centre of sustainable development. Sustainable rural development is vital to the economic, social and environmental viability of nations. It is essential for poverty eradication since global poverty is overwhelmingly rural. The manifestation of poverty goes beyond the urban-rural divide, it has subregional and regional contexts. It is therefore critical, and there is great value to be gained, by coordinating rural development initiatives that contribute to sustainable livelihoods through efforts at the global, regional, national and local levels, as appropriate. Strategies to deal with rural development should take into consideration the remoteness and potentials in rural areas and provide targeted differentiated approaches.

8. A healthy and dynamic agricultural sector is an important foundation of rural development, generating strong linkages to other economic sectors. Rural livelihoods are enhanced through effective participation of rural people and rural communities in the management of their own social, economic and environmental objectives by empowering people in rural areas, particularly women and youth, including through organizations such as local cooperatives and by applying the bottom-up approach. Close economic integration of rural areas with neighbouring urban areas and the creation of rural off-farm employment can narrow rural-urban disparities, expand opportunities and encourage the retention of skilled people, including youth, in rural areas. There is considerable potential for rural job creation not only in farming, agro processing and rural industry but also in building rural infrastructure, in the sustainable management of natural resources, waste and residues. Rural communities in developing countries are still faced with challenges related to access to basic services, economic opportunities and some degree of incoherence with regard to planning related to rural-urban divide. Investments in environmental protection, rural infrastructure and in rural health and education are critical to sustainable rural development and can enhance national well-being. Beyond meeting basic needs, investments must be linked to the potential to raise productivity and income. The vulnerabilities of the rural poor to the economic and financial crisis and to climate change and water shortage must be addressed. The success of sustainable rural development depends on, inter alia, developing and implementing comprehensive strategies for dealing with climate change, drought, desertification and natural disaster. Related actions include:

(a) Promoting poverty eradication in rural areas;
(b) Promoting pro-poor planning and budgeting at the national and local levels;
(c) Addressing basic needs and enhancing provision of and access to services as a precursor to improve livelihoods and as an enabling factor of people?s engagement in productive activities;
(d) Providing social protection programmes to benefit, inter alia, the vulnerable households, in particular the aged, persons with disabilities and unemployed many of whom are in rural areas. Actions are needed to:
(a) Build social capital and resilience in rural communities. In that context:
(i) Empower women and small-scale farmers, and indigenous peoples, including through securing equitable land tenure supported by appropriate legal frameworks;
(ii) Promote equitable access to land, water, financial resources and technologies by women, indigenous peoples and other vulnerable groups;
(iii) Support and promote efforts to harmonize modern technologies with traditional and indigenous knowledge for sustainable rural development;
(iv) Provide access to credit and other mechanisms as well as resources for farm-based activities, especially for small-scale farmers, including women in particular, in developing countries to better manage the various risks they face, including price, weather, climate, water shortages, land degradation and natural disasters, including by providing aid and promoting the development of agricultural insurance markets;
(v) Protect and ensure sustainable use of traditional knowledge, including indigenous knowledge in accordance with article 8 (j) of the Convention on Biological Diversity, for the management of natural resources to address the challenges of sustainable development;
(vi) Facilitate the active participation of vulnerable groups, including women, youth and indigenous peoples and rural communities, in the elaboration of local and national planning of rural development, taking into account national legislation;
(vii) Build the resilience of rural communities to cope with and recover from natural disasters;
(viii) Promote and scale up labour-intensive recovery activities in addition to capital-intensive programmes;
(ix) Support training and capacity-building of rural communities to effectively implement adaptation programmes to climate change at the local level;
(x) Invest resources to enhance research aimed at adapting to the challenges of climate change;
(xi) Foster and strengthen capacities of rural communities for self-organization for building social capital, taking into account national legislation;
(b) Strengthen the human capacities of rural people. In that context:
(i) Strengthen rural health-care facilities and capacities, train and increase the number of health and nutrition professionals and sustain and expand access to primary health-care systems, including through promoting equitable and improved access to affordable and efficient health-care services, including provision of basic health-care services for the poor in rural areas, in particular in Africa, for effective disease prevention and treatment;
(ii) Create and develop educational programmes for rural communities aimed at disease prevention;
(iii) Eliminate old and new forms of illiteracy in rural communities and ensure provision of primary education and access to secondary and tertiary educational opportunities as well as vocational and entrepreneurship training including proactive and market-related elements to build capacities within rural communities, in particular for youth, young girls, women and indigenous people;
(iv) Encourage rural communities? participation in decision-making, promote rural communities? empowerment and rural leadership;
(v) Improve access by rural people and communities to information, education, extension services and learning resources, knowledge and training to support sustainable development planning and decision-making;
(c) Invest in essential infrastructure and services for rural communities. In that context:
(i) Increase public and private investments in infrastructure in rural areas, including roads, waterways and transport systems, storage and market facilities, livestock facilities, irrigation systems, affordable housing, water supply and sanitation services, electrification facilities, and information and communications networks;
(ii) Improve access to reliable and affordable energy services, including renewable and alternative sources of energy for sustainable rural development;
(iii) Enhance access of rural populations to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation;
(iv) Develop and improve access of rural populations to information and communications technologies, inter alia, to support Internet access and build capacities for an effective use of these technologies;
(v) Develop rural public and private services that realize the potential of those technologies, including cellular banking and e extension services;
(vi) Promote the development of rural organizations such as community-driven cooperatives to enhance investment in essential infrastructure and services, and recognize the role of urban areas in fostering rural development;
(vii) Support improved access for all to strengthened rural health-care services and facilities;
(d) Stimulate the creation of new jobs and income opportunities in rural areas. In that context:
(i) Support rural diversification, including on-farm diversification towards non-agricultural and other non-primary production activities;
(ii) Provide appropriate land-use frameworks in order to support the establishment of agricultural activities and both agricultural and non agricultural services related to sustainable rural development, while respecting the rights of rural communities and indigenous people;
(iii) Provide entrepreneurial training, credit and other support to off-farm and other non-primary production activities;
(iv) Strengthen the links between agriculture and other sectors of the rural economy;
(v) Develop sustainable ways to add value to agricultural products locally, subregionally and regionally to generate additional income;
(vi) Support the development, transfer and use of safe and environmentally sound construction technologies and practices, in particular for housing, to improve living standards and to create employment in rural areas;
(vii) Support as appropriate, sustainable tourism as a valuable source of employment and income supplement to farming and other primary production activities, as well as sustainable natural resource management;
(viii) Actively promote sustainable forest management;
(ix) Increase access of rural populations, particularly women, youth, indigenous people and other vulnerable groups, especially in disadvantaged areas, to markets as well as affordable financial and business advisory services, such as market literacy, microcredit, loan guarantees and venture capital;
(x) Expand access to markets by assisting rural producers, associations and firms, especially those from developing countries, to respond to market demand;
(xi) Increase employment opportunities through labour-intensive approaches including green jobs and development of rural infrastructure, taking into account the decent work agenda of the International Labour Organization as an important instrument to achieve the objective of full and productive employment and decent work for all;
(xii) Develop the necessary infrastructure and encourage data collection, including disaggregated population data, synthesis and analysis, to enhance the understanding of the contribution of non farming activities to poverty reduction and income generation in rural areas;
(xiii) Support the development of integration into market of smallholder family agriculture and sharing of experiences and best practices;
(xiv) Promote non-agricultural industries such as mining, service industries, construction and commerce, in a sustainable manner, as a source of employment and income for rural populations;
(e) Ensure environmental sustainability in rural areas. In that context:
(i) Encourage the use of land resources in a sustainable manner to prevent land degradation that is caused by unsustainable exploitation of land resources;
(ii) Encourage the use of environmentally friendly practices;
(iii) Promote sustainable natural resources use and management, including ecosystem conservation through community-based programmes;
(iv) Promote safe and environmentally sound waste management practices;
(f) Promote women?s empowerment and gender equality. In that context:
(i) Involve women in decision-making in all activities related to rural development;
(ii) Take measures that promote access to and ownership of means of production, including land, capital, entrepreneurship, by women;
(iii) Promote gender equality as well as take measures to achieve equal opportunities for women and men in all aspects of rural development;
(iv) Carry out extensive education, and awareness-raising on the rights of women and the concept of empowerment and gender equality in rural areas.

United Nations E/CN.17/2000/7 Economic and Social Council Distr.: General 2 February 2000 Original: English 00-27597 (E) 160200 Commission on Sustainable Devel…

Land is a critical productive asset, and many livelihoods depend on it. This is particularly so in the developing world, and even more for the some one billion people living from the easily degraded resource base in drylands. Land tenure systems in the drylands are often complex and confused, and poor people seldom have confidence in their rights to remain on the land that they farm. Land and water rights are particularly important for nomadic pastoralists whose traditional rights to traverse land and graze their livestock often come into conflict with "modern" systems of fixed rights for sedentary farmers.

The task of reversing land degradation in this important ecosystem requires significant investments in human capital and resource management systems, including land reform efforts. This is as much an issue of governance as it is a technical exercise. Land tenure systems which impose unequal access to, and control of, resources for marginal populations can contribute to the degradation of dryland areas. Effective and secure access to land resources can provide an essential incentive for land users to invest in sustainable land use practices. Legislation alone, however, may not be sufficient, and must be generated through a genuinely participatory process of reflection in order to devise or support locally specific solutions, a process which will be supported in this programme. This in turn requires political buy-in, which can be generated in part through advocacy efforts. These efforts must also be integrated into broader and long term strategies of rural development.

Land governance issues are often highly sensitive and politicized, and donors often find it difficult to intervene in land reform programmes. UNDP has a unique role to play in land reform due to its impartibility and its ability to bring together a wide range of stakeholders.

There are currently two initiatives in this area:

Land Tenure Cross Practice Initiative on land rights empowerment for development.
Support to SADC Land Reform Technical Facility and to land reform activities in the region.

Land Tenure Cross Practice Initiative: sustainable land management to combat desertification and drought. The objective is to promote and build UNDP capacity related to the critical and cross-cutting issues of land tenure practice areas to improve access to, productivity and sustainability of land resources through improved governance of natural resources. In this context, a global survey was undertaken on land governance issues in 120 UNDP country offices. In addition, a parallel survey was conducted to 63 land rights focused civil society organizations in 27 countries in collaboration with International Land Coalition.

The results generated from these surveys have helped in shaping and developing an action plan for UNDP’s engagement in land governance and the production of a booklet that provides guidance on how the UN can create more space on land governance issues for civil society voices. Regional summaries and national fact sheets highlighting particularly valuable projects of UNDP in this area have also been developed. A database of related projects has been created. Together these provide an insight into needs and perceptions by region, priority issues, suggested entry points, complementary partners, capacity needs, successful project modalities, etc.

Support to SADC Land Reform Technical Facility: In response to a call by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Council of Ministers, concerned about the linkages between land access and food security, a Regional Land Reform Support Facility has been established. The design of the Facility is based on a demand assessment from member clients, who highlighted a range of land related issues, many of which were common across multiple countries. Facility currently falls under the Environment and Sustainable Development Unit of the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources (FANR) Directorate, SADC Secretariat.

The main programme areas of SADC Regional Land Reform Support Facility are:

Land Policy Formulation and Implementation (land tenure, land redistribution, land use planning and regulation and general land policy/law/institutions

Land Information Management, Sharing and Learning (best practice lessons, documentation, study tours, land information management needs

Capacity Building (training of civil society on land policy issues, promoting civil society networking

Research (foreign investment and new land questions)

The Facility in collaboration with the Namibia Ministry of Lands and Resettlement commissioned a study on land taxation as an instrument of land reform: learning from the Namibia experience, with financial support from UK-DFID and GTZ. This work has contributed to the poll of best practices documentation in SADC under the Facility’s programme area of Information and Communication.

Rural Development

Promoting sustainable agriculture and rural development (SARD) is the subject of chapter 14 of Agenda 21. The major objective of SARD is to increase food production in a sustainable way and enhance food security. This will involve education initiatives, utilization of economic incentives and the development of appropriate and new technologies, thus ensuring stable supplies of nutritionally adequate food, access to those supplies by vulnerable groups, and production for markets; employment and income generation to alleviate poverty; and natural resource management and environmental protection.

The Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) first reviewed Rural Development at its third session in 1995, when it noted with concern that, even though some progress had been reported, disappointment is widely expressed at the slow progress in moving towards sustainable agriculture and rural development in many countries. Sustainable agriculture was also considered at the five-year review of implementation of Agenda 21 in 1997, at which time Governments were urged to attach high priority to implementing the commitments agreed at the 1996 World Food Summit, especially the call for at least halving the number of undernourished people in the world by the year 2015. This goal was reinforced by the Millennium Declaration adopted by Heads of State and Government in September 2000, which resolved to halve by 2015 the proportion of the world's people who suffer from hunger.

In accordance with its multi-year programme of work, agriculture with a rural development perspective was a major focus of CSD-8 in 2000, along with integrated planning and management of land resources as the sectoral theme. The supporting documentation and the discussions highlighted the linkages between the economic, social and environmental objectives of sustainable agriculture. The Commission adopted decision 8/4 which identified 12 priorities for action. It reaffirmed that the major objectives of SARD are to increase food production and enhance food security in an environmentally sound way so as to contribute to sustainable natural resource management. It noted that food security-although a policy priority for all countries-remains an unfulfilled goal. It also noted that agriculture has a special and important place in society and helps to sustain rural life and land.

Rural Development is included as one of the thematic areas along with Agriculture, Land, Drought, Desertification and Africa in the third implementation cycle CSD-16/CSD-17.