Rural development: Putting the last first

Issue Date: Mar-1993 Description: Sulawesi Regional Development Project Discussion Series: Discussion Paper #2

This is one of four final reports produced at the end of a three year, Department for International Development funded project. Three case study reports (Vols II-IV) present the research findings from the individual research sites (Keoladeo NP, India, Komodo NP, Indonesia, and the south east Lowveld, Zimbabwe). The fourth report (Vol. I) contains a comparison of the findings from each site. Contextual data reports for each site, and methodological reports, were compiled at the end of the first and second years of the project respectively.

Over three decades ago, Robert Chambers published a timely piece of work in the field of rural development. In his tome, he raised a plethora of issues which remain pertinent to academia, practitioners as well as policymakers. His work critiqued the approach to rural development and advocated for a new approach to dealing with development in the periphery. The publication of his work was timely for Zimbabwe given the renewed focus by the new government on development. However, poverty and backwardness remain rife in contemporary Zimbabwe. Using a Chamberian lens, this paper discusses poverty in rural Zimbabwe both from an existential perspective as well as in conceptual terms. It recognizes that some assertions made by Chambers do not play out identically at Sivomo where distance and household income have a strong negative correlation (r=-.553 (two-tailed), p<.05). Assuming such perspectives, the paper makes a modest contribution to the continued call for broad rural development for the millions in the third world. The paper suggests that a more concerted effort be adopted to realize some of the elusive ideals of rural development as outlined by Chambers.

Editorial board, 2002

In July 2002 the UK Department for Transport released its consultations on Regional Air Services, as a precursor to issuing a White Paper designed to provide a policy framework for the next thirty years of UK aviation. Key among the scenarios is the RASCO Reference Case, which assumes a near-tripling of UK demand over 2000–2030 to about 500 mppa. This paper summarises the characteristics and impacts of the reference scenario, collated from the seven regional studies, and shows a clear disjunction between a ...

World Development, 1981

There are gradations of poverty even in the poorest societies. This essay explores indicators that measure wealth differences between households in the same community. Ethnographic and other literature has been surveyed, to provide examples from major Thiid World areas. The most important single indicator is control of land, followed by other productive resources -capital equipment (tractors, ploughs), consumer durables, income (farm and nonfarm) and livestock. Non-productive indicators include housing, consumer goods, fuel, ceremonial expenditure and diet. Methodological problems are examined, and the essay concludes with representative case studies that illustrate effective and specific use of indicators.

The development industry and property rights …, 2010

This study is an enquiry into the relationship between development industry interventions in rural areas and the lives and livelihoods of the people they are proposed to benefit.

This is one of four final reports produced at the end of a three year, Department for International Development funded project. Three case study reports (Vols. II-IV) present the research findings from the individual research sites (Keoladeo NP, India, Komodo NP, Indonesia, and the south-east Lowveld, Zimbabwe). The fourth report (Vol. I) contains a comparison of the findings from each site. Contextual data reports for each site, and methodological reports, were compiled at the end of the first and second years of the project respectively. -all contributed significantly to our understanding of the issues surrounding the development of nature tourism in the lowveld.

Economic linkages between mass tourism cores and rural peripheries are widely proposed as developmental. This article adopts a livelihoods approach to investigate the influence of a major Cam-bodian tourism destination on its rural hinterland. A quantitative pre-study of three rural villages indicated that links were mainly indirect, through labour migration. The qualitative main phase found villagers adapting skills and social networks to a range of employments in diverse locations. Poor households in the rural periphery were thus already connected to wider economies with tourism playing a distinctive low-risk, low-return role in their livelihood strategies. Policy on poverty and tourism should be informed by an understanding of rural households' existing livelihood portfolios and the strategic contingent decisions which shape them.