Social Development and Public Governance > Agriculture and Rural Development
Rural Poverty Reduction
(06/98, ENV-122, En, Es)
This strategy (GN-1995-5) was formally considered by the Board of Executive Directors and the management of the IDB on April 22, 1998.
Abstract
This document proposes a menu of strategic approaches and options for reducing rural poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean, combining the Bank's own experiences and those of other organizations.
The document opens with a useful summary of what's new for the Bank in this strategy. After reviewing the rural poverty scene and lessons learned, the paper continues with a discussion of strategic approaches and options. It then focuses on strategic Bank activities, and proposes a plan of action. The annex contains information on rural development projects financed by the IDB from 1963 to 1997, estimates of urban and rural poverty by country, and lessons from integrated rural development programs.
The Introduction to the strategy appears below.
Introduction
In relative terms, poverty can be said to be a rural phenomenon throughout most of the region. Over 60% of the poor in Mexico, Central America and the Andean countries live in rural areas; rural poverty is more extreme than urban poverty. The number and diversity of circumstances in which the rural poor find themselves makes it difficult in many cases to understand the causes and possible solutions to this problem.
This document proposes a menu of strategic approaches and options for reducing rural poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean, combining the Bank's own experiences and those of other organizations in designing options and instruments for use in programs carried out with the support of the Bank.1 The proposals made in this document are consistent with a number of strategic initiatives already drawn up or in preparation by the Bank, in particular those aimed at poverty reduction (IDB 1997), promotion of microenterprises (IDB 1996a), development of indigenous communities, rural finance (IDB 1998a), and sustainable agriculture (IDB 1998a). Thus, a number of the alternatives presented here are already being applied by the Bank in several of its activities. Depending on the needs of each country, one or more of the options discussed could be used to define a rural poverty reduction agenda on a case-by-case basis. The flexibility of these approaches makes it possible to apply them to specific problems at the national, regional and even municipal level.
Rural development programs fall into the category of poverty targeted investments whether aimed at regions or individuals, in accordance with the social equity and poverty reduction objectives set out in the Bank's Eighth Replenishment. Although the Bank has not had an explicit rural poverty reduction strategy around which to design projects in this area, it has nonetheless financed projects aimed at low-income groups in rural areas approximately 40 rural development projects designed to alleviate one or more of their specific problems.2 During the past 30 years, the Bank has financed approximately 40 rural development projects for over one billion dollars (Figure 1 and Annex 1), which represents about 10% of total financing for rural, agriculture, fisheries and forestry projects.
In addition to programs aimed specifically at rural development, there are other Bank projects and activities that directly and/or indirectly benefit the rural sector, such as land titling, regional development, agricultural development, sustainable development and modernization of services. Moreover, the Bank has financed a number of rural development activities as part of investment programs classified under other sectors (watershed management, health, education, infrastructure) and in other types of projects (microenterprise and technical cooperations).
Given the great importance attached to this area under the Eighth Replenishment, and notwithstanding the difficulty in estimating the total number of activities financed by the Bank that affect rural poverty, it's worth noting the small number of projects focusing on this problem, and that the number has been declining since the mid-1980s, and especially during the past five years.
1. Some of the elements included in this document have been discussed at the technical level at the Bank in recent years (BID 1994, Aristizabal et al 1992, Benito 1991). The document is based on Echenique (1996) and includes experiences of the World Bank (World Bank 1997, Binswanger 1995, Binswanger et al 1993), IFAD (IFAD 1992 and Monares and Parera 1995), IFPRI (Garrett 1996), IICA (IICA 1995 and de Janvry et al. 1989), and USAID (1987, 1994).
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2. The most recent policy document related to operations in this sector is "Integrated Rural Development Programs" (OP-752, Reference Document GP-108-3 of August 1984).
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Last updated: 05/21/07
