International development

Abstract

Sustainability, equity, and participation are the three policy goals addressed in this chapter, which focuses primarily on rural development and natural resource management in Third World nations. The emphasis here on rural development is justified because most people in the Third World live in rural areas. Problems of resource depletion often reflect the desperation of people marginalized by agricultural and industrial development. Those who remain in rural areas often are forced into patterns of resource use that provide short-term subsistence but are not sustainable in the long run. Many threats to resource systems, however, are caused not by the poor but by members of elite classes who use their position to gain control over lands, forests, and water resources.