Working title: Unlocking the potential of tomorrow’s generation

IFAD’s flagship publication looks at rural poverty today, and it seeks solutions that will enable rural people overcome poverty in a rapidly changing world. It is intended to inspire policy makers and practitioners, especially those in developing countries, with an improved understanding of how to create the conditions for reducing rural poverty today, and with new ideas about the options going forwards. The Report is expected to have lasting value for IFAD and its partners as well as the rural development community more broadly over the years to come.

The context

The Rural Poverty Report takes as its entry point poor rural people in the developing world. It focuses on their livelihoods, the constraints they face and the opportunities open to them, and it seeks to identify a series of routes that they can take to climb out of poverty.  Yet we know that the problems and opportunities faced by rural people in Chad, China or Chile very considerably. Rural people have diverse livelihoods, as producers of food and other agricultural products, as pastoralists, fishers, hunter-gatherers, and – increasingly – as labourers and micro-entrepreneurs.  An ever-growing number migrate from their homes to find better opportunities. And we know too that the problems faced by men are frequently different to those faced by women, by the youth, and by indigenous peoples. All these differences will be reflected in the Report.

The rural poor live in a world that is changing rapidly. A globalised economy offers new opportunities and risks for developing countries, regional economic and political groupings are emerging, and a number of middle-income developing countries have an ever-more important political and economic role in the world. More and more countries have embraced democracy, and space has opened up to allow for civil society organisations – including those of poor rural people – to operate, both locally and globally. In a growing number of countries, these organizations are able to influence government policies and provide valuable services to their members. And in more and more countries, there is a rapidly emerging private sector that plays a key investment and service role in sectors ranging from agro-processing to telecommunications to retail. All of these changes are all of enormous relevance for poor rural people.

The past decade has also seen a slowing in rates of population growth in developing countries, and in the rural areas of developing countries. In around 2009, for the first time in history the world’s urban population overtook the rural population. In developing countries, rapidly increasing urban populations have created new and growing market opportunities – and risks – for rural producers. In many countries, the combination of urbanisation, migration, new markets, and improved communications, have all contributed to the emergence of a ‘new rurality’, marked in part by much closer links between the rural and urban spaces and economies.

The food and fuel price crisis, and then the global financial crisis, that struck between 2007 and 2009 had profound effects on the rural poor in developing countries. While estimates vary, the combined effects of these crises may have pushed up to 100 million people into hunger and/or extreme poverty. The food price crisis had other important effects. It prompted a significant number of developing country governments to review their food policies and to reconsider their commitment to the liberal market policies that they had been pursuing. Interest grew, amongst governments and private investors, in acquiring land in third countries for staple food and other agricultural commodities, leading to fears of a new ‘land grab’ and of poor rural people being displaced from their lands. But in addition, the crisis led many to pose a new set of questions about the future: about the appropriate role of governments in economic management and about food prices and global food security in the medium term.

It is only in the last two to three years that climate change has become part of the mainstream development discourse. The impacts of short-term climate variability and long-term climate change on agricultural productivity and on the livelihoods of rural people themselves are increasingly being understood. Although efforts are already being mobilised to assist rural people to adapt to climate change, this will become an ever-greater challenge in the coming years. At the same time, a linked issue is now to identify how rural people can participate in, and benefit from, markets for environmental services generally, and climate change mitigation specifically. One thing has become clear: rural poverty reduction in this new era of climate change will be an ever greater challenge, the responses to which will be governed by different rules, with environmental sustainability shooting up the agenda.

These are the issues that provide the backdrop to the Rural Poverty Report. What, then, do they mean for poor rural people and their livelihoods – not only today, but in the next 20 years? Will climate variability, declining access to land and water, exclusion from global markets and low rural wages result in growing poverty and hunger? Or will we see increased investment in the rural areas and enabling policies leading to increased agricultural productivity, stronger rural organizations, and a growing rural economy in which the poor share the benefits? How can we ensure that they are able to deal with the vulnerability that these new risks and uncertainties will impose upon them, while taking advantage of the new opportunities that open up.  Above all, how can the rural areas become a place where the children and youth of today - tomorrow’s generation – want to live and aspire to build  their livelihoods, either as productive small farmers linked up to remunerative markets, or as rural entrepreneurs and employees adding value in the rural economy?

The report

The Report remains work in progress. However, it will likely be split into three parts. Its first part will introduce the main themes to be addressed in the report, and in particular provide a vision of rural economic development and diversification, and of the likely opportunities open to poor rural people to transform their livelihoods and increase their incomes, today and in the coming years.  It will continue with a discussion of the state of rural poverty today: what poverty means in different regions, the different causes of poverty, and the changes taking places in rural populations across the world. It will also look at poor rural people themselves: who they are, where they live and what they do, and how their occupations in the rural areas are gradually changing. It will conclude with a discussion of the risks confronting poor rural people and their vulnerability to shocks, and look at ways in which that vulnerability can be overcome. It will argue strongly that addressing risk and vulnerability is a prerequisite for poverty reduction, while playing a critical role in preventing people from falling into poverty.

The second part of the report will explore the opportunities for reducing rural people’s vulnerability to shocks and capitalising upon the economic opportunities open to them, today and in the future. It will start with a discussion of the emerging opportunities open to smallholder producers as participants in agricultural markets – local, regional and global; and it explores how they can be assisted to participate more profitably. It also looks at the extent to which agricultural markets can offer opportunities for poorer rural people as labourers rather than as producers, and what can be done to promote ‘decent work’ opportunities.

The Report will then look at how smallholders’ agricultural production systems can be made more productive, more profitable, more environmentally sustainable and more resilient to climatic variation, while also generating incomes for the provision of environmental services. It doing so, it will build on recent ideas such as ‘multifunctional’ agriculture, ‘agro-ecological approaches’ and ‘sustainable intensification’. It will also look at how policies and institutions can be reshaped to support this emerging agenda, and highlight the key roles that agricultural research and farmer knowledge systems must play.

The second part of the Report will conclude with a review of the rural non-farm economy: its dependence on increased agricultural productivity and its ever-growing importance as an engine of rural economic growth and source of employment for poor rural people, particularly youth and women. The Report will argue that in many countries the rural non-farm economy has been relatively neglected by policy makers, and it highlights a number of key policy options for reversing that neglect and promoting the ‘missing middle’ of rural enterprises.

The third part of the Report will start by looking forward to 2030. It will present the outcomes of a modelling exercise designed to understand the consequences for rural poverty reduction of a series of key and a number of assumptions, both positive and negative. How bad could things get for rural people? What could the future look like for rural people if things are done right? What are the key things that make the difference?

The Report will close with a call for action, for policy makers, donors, NGOs and the private sector, which will enable the world to attain the positive scenario. It will build on key themes that have been raised throughout the report. These are likely to include a focus on youth and innovation; on reducing the vulnerability of poor rural people to shocks; on building their capabilities – both as individuals, through education, training and skills development, and their organizations; on promoting the rural areas as a place to live and realise economic opportunities; on governance and eliminating corruption; on promoting food security; on strengthening rural labour markets; and promoting gender equality.

Throughout, the Report will look at issues from the perspective of poor rural people.  It will include case studies which show how people can overcome their problems and achieve a better future.  And in all the chapters, substantial space will be given over to voices of rural people themselves, to enable them to give their views and ideas on the various topics covered in the Report.

A broad consultative process

The Rural Poverty Report will be the result of a broad consultative process within and beyond IFAD. The steps include:

• Background papers for chapters, and development of a conceptual framework, structure and key messages in collaboration with experts from a range of development and research institutions.
• Wide consultations to help ensure that the Report responds to the concerns and priorities of policy makers and practitioners in developing and developed countries, organizations of poor rural people and NGOs.
• On-the-ground scouting and stocktaking efforts to identify ‘success stories’ – documenting effective and sustainable responses, particularly those developed by poor rural people, to emerging challenges.
• External reviews of draft texts by carefully-selected experts with a range of experience and interests related to agricultural development, rural poverty reduction and broad-based economic growth.

It is intended that the Rural Poverty Report should be a valuable reference for a wide range of stakeholders in rural development and poverty reduction, including policymakers, donors, development organizations, private-sector foundations and enterprises, and rural organizations in all regions where IFAD works. It will provide policy-relevant inputs for developing pro-poor agendas at the global, regional and country levels that empower poor rural people to address old and emerging challenges in a sustainable way.

The Rural Poverty Report will be published in 2010.