This paper discusses the assumptions underlying non-timber forest product (NTFP)-based approaches. The authors examine conservation dimensions, highlighting the differences in perceptions among different stakeholder groups about what should be conserved, and development issues, including the role of NTFPs in meeting cultural and subsistence, and in enabling people to deal with increasing integration into market systems. This is followed by an examination of the institutional frameworks that influence pursuit of both conservation and development objectives.

The triple challenge of rapid population growth, declining agricultural productivity, and natural resource degradation are not isolated from one another; they are intimately related. However, strategic planning and development programming tend to focus on individual sectors such as the environment, agriculture, and population; they do not explicitly take into account the compatibilities and inconsistencies among them. Farm households and their livelihood strategies are at the core of the intersectoral linkages approach advocated in this chapter.

Paper defines a strategy for forest sector development, and translates it for practical application. In response to the causes of deforestation and desertification, which are rooted in a complex web of socio-economic factors (both inside and, mainly, outside the forests) these guidelines are centred on the needs of people living in and making a living from forests. Sustainable forest management is based on economic, environmental, social and cultural criteria and indicators.

Examines the implications of the HIV epidemic for rural development policies and programmes in sub-Saharan Africa and, in particular: the inter-relationships between rural development and HIV/AIDS; and the broad policy and programming challenges that the epidemic poses for rural institutions. The proposed conceptual framework for the identification of key policy and programming issues for rural development raised by HIV is intended to provide guidance for the design and conduct of a set of four case studies to be carried out in Southern and Eastern Africa.

In opdracht van het Ministerie van LNV, Directie Groene Ruimte en Recreatie heeft DLO-Staring Centrum een monitoring uitgevoerd van het beleid voor de Waardevolle Cultuurlandschappen (WCL). Dit rapport bevat zowel het kwalitatieve als het kwantitatieve gedeelte van de monitoring en richt zich op de jaren 1994 tot en met 1996 met een doorkijk naar 1997. Het proces wordt beschreven van het organiseren van de uitvoering van WCL, het opstellen van het gebiedsperspectief en het aandragen en uitvoeren van projecten. Van daaruit is aangegeven in welke mate de WCL-doelstellingen worden bereikt.

How would environmentally sustainable development look if it was gender-sensitive? This report argues that much mainstream literature on environmentally sustainable development has ignored the gender dimensions. Where women have been the target of programmes, they have been seen as natural managers of environmental resources. A gender analysis is important because gender relations affect the ways in which poor men and women manage natural resources.

In this study, an economywide model focused on Morocco's rural economy is used as a laboratory for analyzing issues at the core of such a rural development strategy.The model is used to explore the effects of alternative scenarios for water tariffs and sales, and supply-side advances (irrigation expansion, and accelerated productivity growth, both in agriculture and other sectors). Among these, instruments of tax policy and irrigation expansion are under the direct control of policymakers whereas other supply-side shifts are less directly influenced by government actions.

This paper draws out the key links between land tenure and poverty eradication. The author argues that in countries where land distribution remains highly inequitable, effectively designed and targeted, it could be a key component of anti-poverty strategies, but significant complementary measures, notably agrarian support services, are also required to achieve real impacts, together with investments in employment and economic diversification.