Rural Development Strategy

Reaching the Rural Poor in the East Asia and Pacific Region

The regional approach is interdisciplinary, considering a number of various areas such as forestry, fisheries, coastal resources, water resources, rural infrastructure, microfinance, and agriculture.

                    East Asia's widespread adoption of Green Revolution techniques in agriculture during the last 30 years has increased both food production and the income of many millions of farmers. A parallel Blue Revolution has occurred in the production of aquatic food sources. Today, most countries in East Asia enjoy a much greater degree of food security than they have ever known before, and the consequent freeing of surplus labor from food production to the urban sector is a chief reason for the region's vibrant economic growth.

Greater efficiency in agricultural production and continued population growth (although slower) have also made rural regions the setting for most of East Asia's poverty and unemployment. In addition, overall economic growth has not been matched by improved services, such as health, education and physical infrastructure in rural areas, or by a significant increase in nonagricultural rural jobs that could absorb the growing rural work force.

As a result, of the four billion people that subsist on incomes of US$2 a day or less, more than 600 million live in rural Asia. This situation will not change without the combined efforts of Asian governments, the rich countries of the West, and international institutions. But all of those involved in creating strategies to alleviate poverty are gradually learning the importance of listening carefully to the poor themselves.

The issues and strategies pursued by the region's rural development and agriculture program are heavily influenced by their voices and described in the following document: Reaching the Rural Poor in the East Asia and Pacific Region (8.4mb pdf)

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World Bank Agriculture and Rural Development Strategy

Today the fight against poverty will be won or lost in rural areas, home to about 70percent of the world's poor. The likelihood of achieving the Millennium Development Goals without a focus on improving the livelihoods and service accessibility of rural dwellers is low.

Drawing on regional strategies developed during the consultative process, the World Bank has developed a rural strategy that focuses attention on the plight of the rural poor. It is a clarion call to address the needs of poor people in rural areas. It stresses that improvements in the well-being of the poor will only be possible through enhancement of their productive, social and environmental assets. This means increasing the productivity and growth of both the farm and non farm economies.

The rural strategy is one of several thematic and sector-specific strategies developed and implemented by the World Bank in partnership with their client countries. Agriculture and rural strategy development is a dynamic process, responding to changes and evolutions in the broader development arena on an ongoing basis. Depending on the degree of change, every 5 years or so the Agriculture and Rural Development sector revisits its strategy in consultation with a wide variety of stakeholders. For the current strategy the consultative process began in 2000. The resulting strategy, Reaching the Rural Poor, was endorsed by the World Bank's Board of Directors on October 31, 2002 and published in 2003.

 Access the report: Reaching the Rural Poor - A Renewed Strategy for Rural Development
 Executive Summary

More Information
 The World Bank Strategy on Rural Development and Agriculture