'State of the art' of approaches, strategies and methods for improving natural resource management and livelihoods. Indications for future directions

The global sustainable development agenda supports equitable development that ensures sustainable use ofthe natural resource base and improves livelihoods. SARD and World Bank embrace the idea thatagriculture is the engine that will drive economic growth and that the existence of technologies and legalframeworks as well as social and institutional capacity will propel this development. This paper reviewssuccess factors for achieving sustainable development, highlighting both internal and external factors thatare needed to enable improved livelihoods and environmental management in the rural sector. Many of theinternal success factors revolve around being better able to do and control a number of aspects of ruraldevelopment – the so-called “empowerment factor”. External factors support the community and includeenabling policy and institutional environments, market economies, availability of information and advisoryorganizations, good governance, good and accountable management, and existence of platforms fordiscussion and exchange. Many of these elements have been brought into the integrated natural resourcemanagement (INRM) research approach. Following an overview of the Sustainable Agriculture and RuralDevelopment (SARD) paradigm and a synthesis of key success factors for SARD, the paper reviewsapproaches, strategies and methods in NRM research. The paper then consolidates the INRM researchapproach based that has emerged from diverse NRM approaches and is built on SARD principles. Thepaper concludes by distilling five key factors enabling sustainable development and natural resourcemanagement, and their implications for research challenges and needs.

---

• View source