Rural Development

Principles and Practice

Malcolm Moseley

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9780761947677, 9780761947660
• eBook ISBN: 9781446235942
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

`Malcolm Moseley makes an impressive job of "cutting through the cackle" and has produced a definitive catch-all volume to inform students, practitioners, community activists and local decision makers alike.... The book is transparently and logically laid out.... From a personal perspective as community activist and local authority member, I found the book invaluable. Here were satisfying definitions of terms I have grappled with for years - "rural", "community", "sustainable", "social capital", "capacity building", "the leaky bucket". Here also were some outstanding examples of good practice... In sum, this is a rural community development painting by numbers in the hands of an old master, well worth around £20 of investment? - The Rural Digest

Advocating the fundamental need for an innovative and holistic approach to rural development, Rural Development: Principles and Practice demonstrates and explains, whilst seeking to improve, the mechanisms for planning, managing and financing rural development at the local level.

This book is structured in terms of the key concepts of this field: sustainability, innovation, adding value, entrepreneurship, community, social inclusion, accessibility, partnership, community involvement, diagnosis, strategic planning, implementation and evaluation. Each is then placed into a practical context by two illustrative case studies related to development in rural Europe, the initiatives of which the author was either personally involved in or had personal knowledge.

The first director of ACRE (the national voluntary organisation committed to promoting the vitality of England?s villages and small towns and to improving the quality of life of their disadvantaged residents), Malcolm Moseley is a researcher, teacher and consultant in the European Union?s `LEADER Rural Development Programme? and the Countryside and Community Research Unit of the University of Gloucestershire. The author draws from this wealth of personal experience with the aim of providing activists, practitioners and specialists, as well as students, a concise and operational text which links the theory and practice of undertaking locally focused rural development. As such, Rural Development: Principles and Practice is essential reading for all interested or actively involved in local rural development issues.

1

Rural Development: Making It Local

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‘You’ve got the crowd, you know the pitch...’ (David Beckham on the advantages of playing at home)

This book is about ‘rural development’, about the attempts being made in Britain and other parts of Europe to address in a co-ordinated and locally sensitive way the range of pressing economic, social and environmental problems that beset the continent’s rural areas. More specifically it is about some of the fundamental issues and concepts that underlie that intervention – concepts that relate both to the rationale of rural development and to the manner of its realisation.

Those issues and concepts form the focus of the 13 chapters that follow this introduction, but given the underlying thesis of the book, that rural development can only be pursued successfully at the local level, none of them is more important than local development, which involves bringing to bear the full range of local resources, human and material, to resolve identified concerns. The task of this first chapter then is to explore the meaning and purpose of ‘rural’ and ‘local’ development and to present as a case study the LEADER programme, both as a pan-European rural development programme devised in Brussels and as a local development venture carried out in a small part of rural Wales.

But first, the word ‘rural’. A considerable literature exists on what ‘rural’ might mean and, indeed, on whether ‘rurality’ is really significant in the context of advanced western society in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries (see for example Denham and White, 1998; Dunn et al., 1998; Shucksmith et al., 1996). Here, however, we will be heavily pragmatic, simply defining ‘rural areas’ as those with ‘low population density containing scattered dwellings, hamlets, villages and small towns’, and effectively put to one side such questions as ‘How low is “low”?’ and ‘How small is “small”?’, since there is no agreed answer to such questions, the ‘cut-off points’ of density and settlement size being best set according to the task in hand.

The point is that an emphasis on population density – rather than on other possible criteria of rurality with strong competing claims such as land use, economic structure, culture and remoteness – usefully focuses attention on what, in the context of development initiatives, are three crucial elements of the rural scene:

• the fact that all rural people, and many of the economic, social, political and cultural activities which are relevant to their well-being, are by definition located in isolated buildings or in settlements that are both small and widely separated;
• the fact that the wide expanses of land that necessarily separate them are subject to a mass of powerful and competing demands and pressures as agriculture and other forms of land-extensive economic activity are compelled to restructure; and
• the fact that an increasingly prosperous and ‘space hungry’ urban population is drawn, in a variety of ways and for a variety of reasons, both to those small settlements and to the wide expanses of land that separate them.

That essential rural context has certainly conditioned, even if it has not ‘caused’, a set of inter-related concerns that have intensified in recent years and which underlie the various calls made for ‘rural development’ programmes. Those concerns are not universal – indeed we will later stress the diversity of rural Europe – but in varying ways and to a varying extent they are certainly widespread and keenly felt. The following is an indicative, and by no means exhaustive, list:

• First are some economic concerns which derive from the reduced and still reducing ability of land-extensive economic activities – notably agriculture, forestry, quarrying and mining – and of many other rural industries linked closely to them to provide secure employment and adequate incomes for the people engaged in them. Other ‘economic’ concerns relate not to the challenge of reformulating and complementing land-based industry but to the costs of servicing a widely scattered population that offers little in the way of economies of scale.
• Second are various social and cultural concerns which are often subsumed in the expression ‘rural deprivation’. They include un- and under-employment, low incomes, social exclusion, insufficient affordable housing for local people, the steady decline of local services and facilities and a deeper cultural malaise linked to the erosion of caring local communities, a sense of powerlessness in the face of rapid change, and latent or overt conflict between long-established residents and many newcomers with different sets of values.
• Third are environmental concerns which stem particularly from agricultural intensification and a consequent decline in wildlife and in habitat and countryside diversity. They derive also from the growing pressures placed on the countryside by an urban population that is increasingly keen to live, work and/or enjoy its leisure time there.
• Fourth, to these may be added some political and institutional concerns related to the lack or frequent inadequacy of the machinery necessary to resolve such concerns at the local level in a way that recognises both their inter-relatedness and the vital need for collaborative working between a host of agencies and actors including local residents themselves.

Sometimes such concerns are expressed indirectly in ‘vision statements’ which encapsulate what would prevail if they were satisfactorily resolved. A recent example is that of the British government set out in a ‘Rural White Paper’ summarising its policies for rural England (Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions and Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food 2000: 6):

Our vision is of

• a living countryside with thriving rural communities and access to high quality public services
• a working countryside with a diverse economy giving high and stable levels of employment
• a protected countryside in which the environment is sustained and enhanced and which all can enjoy
• a vibrant countryside which can shape its own future...

Much the same sentiment had been expressed four years earlier in a declaration issued jointly by several hundred ‘rural leaders’ drawn from across Europe and meeting in Cork under the aegis of the European Union. The ‘Cork declaration’ of November 1996 (LEADER Observatory 1997a) marked a significant step on the road from narrow agricultural and other sectoral policies applied to rural Europe in general, towards specifically rural policies and programmes respecting the needs and resources of local areas. Its action plan made explicit the need for integrated rural development policy with a clear territorial dimension, the diversification of economic activity, respect for the tenets of sustainability and of subsidiarity (meaning the ‘decentralisation’ of decision-making) and improved mechanisms for planning, managing and financing rural development at the local level.

RURAL DEVELOPMENT

This brings us to the definition of rural development. The following three suggested definitions build on the above brief discussion of ‘rurality’ and of associated concerns and aspirations to encapsulate what most contemporary commentators understand by the term:

• ‘a broad notion encompassing all important issues pertinent to the collective vitality of rural people and places... [including] education, health, housing, public services and facilities, capacity for leadership and governance, and cultural heritage as well as sectoral and general economic issues...’ (OECD, 1990: 23);
• ‘a multi-dimensional process that seeks to integrate, in a sustainable manner, economic, socio-cultural and environmental objectives’ (Kearney et al., 1994: 128); and
• ‘a sustained and sustainable process of economic, social, cultural and environmental change designed to enhance the long-term well-being of the whole community’ (Moseley, 1996b: 20).

The third of these definitions includes 12 italicised words which are central to the understanding of ‘rural development’ and to its promotion:

• sustained... not short-lived;
• sustainable...respecting our inherited ‘capital’;
• process...a continuing and inter-related set of actions;
• economic...relating to the production, distribution and exchange of goods and services;
• social...relating to human relationships;
• cultural...relating to ‘ways of life’ and sources of identity;
• environmental...relating to our physical and biotic surroundings;
• designed...deliberately induced, not naturally evolving;
• long-term...relating to decades not years;
• well-being...not just material prosperity;
• whole...inclusive of all ages, both genders, all social groups; and
• community...here meaning people living or working in the relevant area.

Many of those terms are defined more rigorously later. But for now the above shorthand expressions will suffice to reveal the multi-faceted nature of rural development as it is currently and generally understood.

LOCAL DEVELOPMENT

But why should ‘rural development’ be pursued principally at the local level? Why do rural programmes and plans and the projects that they contain need to relate not just to ‘rural areas in general’ but to this or that specific area? Why should machinery be put in place at the local level for determining and implementing rural development policies, programmes and projects? In short, why and how far should there be both ‘decentralisation’ (a shift of decisionmaking to ‘lower levels’) and ‘territorialisation’ (shift of focus from sectors such as education, transport and manufacturing to areas)? Setting aside for the present what ‘local’ might mean in terms of population size and geographical extent, there seem to be five main (and often overlapping) elements of the argument for specifically local development. (Useful references on this key issue include O’Cinneide and Cuddy (1992) and National Economic and Social Council (1994), both relating to rural Ireland, Buller (2000), on rural France, and, more generally, LEADER Observatory (1999a & b and 2001). The last-mentioned source posits the emergence of a distinctive ‘European rural model’ of development centred on the ‘local area perspective’.

1. The first argument for local rural development relates to local diversity. Rural areas across Europe have much in common but they are far from being identical. Some have economies still dominated by agriculture; for others tourism, mineral extraction, retirement migration or manufacturing industry may be their principal vocation. Some may still be experiencing de-population, while for others it is rapid population growth and related social upheavals that characterise them. Some suffer from being ‘too close’ to metropolitan areas; for others it is remoteness that underlies their situation. Some are well-endowed with natural resources, others are not. So while all rural areas have, by definition, a scattered population and a landscape dominated by open countryside, their economic and social circumstances, their problems, needs and development potential will all vary greatly. It follows that the programmes that address their problems must be locally sensitive.
2. Second, rural problems are interlocking, and, in consequence, so must be both the measures to address them and the agencies involved. And the most effective way of achieving this may well be at an intermediate level, somewhere between the nation or region on the one hand, and the village or parish/commune on the other. It is at this level, the argument runs, that partnerships are best forged and co-ordination achieved or, to put it another way, that top-down priorities relating to sectors (such as healthcare, energy or specific industrial sectors) and bottom-up needs (across relatively homogeneous geographical areas) are best reconciled. As one Irish commentator put it, ‘area-based partnerships have the potential to be the “central cog” that connects local needs and priorities with the “sectoral cogs” (sectoral programmes, funding and related agencies) which can supply the energy necessary for balanced and sustainable rural development’ (Mannion, 1996: 12).
3. The third argument relates to local identification and mobilisation. It accepts that local people – both as individuals and collectively in groups, organisations and firms – are key resources in rural development, as sources of information, ideas, energy and enterprise. Such people will, however, only be enthused to participate if they feel that the venture at issue is clearly relevant to their concerns and that any contribution they make is likely to produce beneficial change. The more the area of operation is confined geographically and the more it is in some sense coherent rather than a hotch-potch of localities that happen to be in reasonable proximity to one another, the more this crucial resource of unpaid local energy is likely to be forthcoming and sustained. So this argument is about building and mobilising social capital and drawing upon local knowledge and experience.
4. Fourth, there has been a growing sense that adding value to local resources is likely to provide a more secure and sustainable future for economic development than is a strategy involving excessive reliance upon imported materials and capital (even if, ironically, releasing that local added value often requires initial injections of non-local, for example EU, capital). This implies a need for a greater and more respectful understanding of local resources, in the broadest sense, and of their potential for creating new business opportunities. A second strand to this argument concerns the value of encouraging local purchasing by local people and organisations – a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Rural Development: Making it Local
• PRINCIPLES
• PRACTICE
• References
• Index