Tackling rural poverty, together

Extract

Platform Speaking offers you exclusive interviews with people driving rural reform in the developing world. Although their views do not necessarily represent the policy of the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development (the 'Platform') or of their respective organisations, they address our core concerns.

These include a new donor determination to ensure that host governments and ministries effectively take charge of rural development and, in partnership with them, to make measurable progress towards the alleviation of poverty.
And perhaps most important of all, the Platform’s 26 bilateral and multilateral member-organisations are committed to coordinating, wherever possible, their separate activities more effectively. This should result in less frustration and duplication of effort, saved time and money, and more productive investment in rural areas.

As the following interviews show, the working habits and institutional ‘flag-planting’ of many decades won’t change overnight. But the tide is turning.
Climate change, water shortages, soil erosion and the destruction of forests, fisheries and biodiversity are not only afflicting farmers and rural dwellers, they are now also at the forefront of global preoccupations. Women’s rights, food security, good roads, clean water, access to education, to healthcare, to social services and markets – all concern rural development. Lessons have been learned and new approaches are being developed. Governance is improving, political will is gathering and funds arebuilding.

Given the depth and breadth of opinion and experience in the Platform’s membership, we have made shared learning one of our central tenets. To quote Platform Co-Chairman Dr. Christoph Kohlmeyer, the Platform’s work on the new modalities of aid “can provide us with a shared common empirical and analytical basis todevise the right approaches and then talk togovernments as a united group”. The following pages are part of this sharing.