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Regional Network to Promote Latin American Rural Development

2008-05

Some 65 million people are living in poverty in rural communities throughout Latin America. They lack access to basic resources, face lower life expectancy and literacy rates than urban populations, and have been largely excluded from governments’ development policies.

But a new initiative involving researchers, community leaders, and territorial governments from 10 Latin American countries will address the unique problems faced by Latin America’s rural populations and allow participants to share lessons learned. 

The Network of Sub-National Governments for the Development of Latin American Rural Territories will explore ways to reduce poverty, create healthier economies, improve social inclusion, and encourage environmentally sustainable practices in rural communities.

Twenty political leaders from Chile, Mexico, Peru, Brazil, Uruguay, Guatemala, Ecuador, Colombia, Argentina, and Bolivia unanimously approved the creation of the network while gathered in Santiago, Chile, for the Latin American Seminar of Mayors, Governors, and Prefects, May 12-13.  (read the declaration in Spanish)

“There are signs that should motivate us to rethink the role and importance of rural areas in contemporary Latin American development,” said former Chilean president Ricardo Lagos at the seminar. “The food crisis, agriculture’s environmental impact, and the persistence of poverty and inequality are three clear signals that all is not well, and that we must think of a new relationship with rural Latin America. One that stimulates revitalization in the rural world with a sense of social justice.”

“[Governors, mayors, and prefects] have the institutional weight and growing political power which they can mobilize to create new strategies at the rural territorial level, new public policies, new innovative social coalitions … to solve old and new problems that limit the revitalization of Latin America’s rural societies.

Long-time IDRC partner the Latin American Center for Rural Development (RIMISP) was a driving force behind the creation of the network. For more than two decades, RIMISP has been developing and implementing  practical ways to reduce poverty and inequality in rural areas throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

“The guiding principle of the initiative is that poverty takes on a territorial dimension,” explains Montevideo-based Merle Faminow, program leader for IDRC’s  Rural Poverty and Environment program. “The rural poor are often marginalized into specific territories or regions of countries. Even within territories experiencing rapid economic growth, poor people are often marginalized into sub-regions.”

“This network is really important for the region,” he added. “In order to have policy-relevant research, you have to interact with policymakers.”

For more information

About RIMISP:

A leading rural development knowledge centre, the RIMISP network works in 10 Latin American countries to promote learning and innovation in rural development to foster equity, inclusion, well-being, and democracy in rural societies.

IDRC has supported RIMISP for more than 20 years, particularly by funding RIMISP’s backing of smaller rural development organizations. For example, RIMISP has examined how economic markets can be governed so that they are accessible to the rural poor. It has also used IDRC funding to develop research tools that evaluate how government policies affect these populations.

IDRC provided support to RIMISP to help it contribute to the World Bank's Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development. Those contributions resulted in significant changes to the report’s key messages and in the inclusion of new sections, such as one on the importance of policy in advancing an “agriculture for development” agenda.

www.rimisp.org/

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