Extract: Rural poverty and population decline are now only weakly connected with a rural county's economic dependence on agriculture, mining, or Federal landownership. Thus, natural resource dependent counties are not the principal target for programs designed to relieve population decline and low-income problems in rural America. This report examines the influence of natural resource dependence on rural income levels and recent population growth.
Most land in the United States is in rural areas, as are the sources of most of its fresh water and almost all its other natural resources. One of the first books to approach resource economics and rural studies as fundamentally interconnected areas of study, Frontiers in Resource and Rural Economics integrates the work of 18 leading scholars in resource economics, rural economics, rural sociology and political science in order to focus on two complex interdependencies-one pertaining to natural resources and human welfare, the other to urban and rural communities and their economies. The book reviews the past 50 years of scholarship in both natural resource and rural economics. It contrasts their different intellectual and practical approaches and considers how they might be refocused in light of pressing demands on human and natural systems. It then proposes a 'new rural economics' that acknowledges the full range of human-ecosystem and urban-rural interdependencies. It explores the relationship between natural resources and economic growth, and considers the prospects for amenity-driven growth that would benefit both new and traditional inhabitants of rural areas. Later chapters explore the politics of place, spatial economics, strategies for reducing rural poverty, and prospects for linking rural and environmental governance. Throughout, the book emphasizes innovative research methods that integrate natural resource, environmental, and rural economics.
The developing worldOCOs poorest people live in marginal, often harsh rural environments. The natural resource base tends to be fragile and highly vulnerable to over exploitation. Yet these rural people depend directly on access to the food, forage, fuel, fibre, water, medicines, and building materials provided by local ecosystems. What types of natural resource management (NRM) can improve the livelihoods of these poor people while protecting or enhancing the natural resource base they depend on? New approaches to NRM are needed OCo ones that move beyond the earlier narrow focus on productivity (such as crop yields), to include social, institutional, and policy considerations."
This book provides an international perspective on rural planning, focused on developing countries. It examines conventional development planning and innovative local planning approaches, drawing together lessons from recent experience of rural planning and land use. The authors examine past and current practice and ways that land use planning and management of natural resources can underpin sustainable local livelihoods. They draw on case studies from Africa, Asia and Latin America to present findings relevant throughout the developing world.
