D+C Development and Cooperation (No. 6, November/December 2000,
p. 13 - 14)

For the first time at a world exposition, a conference series on the social, ecological and political challenges of our times was held at EXPO 2000 in Hanover. Titled 'Global Dialogue', the series between June and October consisted of 10 international specialist conferences with top-calibre speakers.

One of the three-day conferences followed with particular interest by the development community examined in depth 'The Role of Rural Areas in the 21st Century - Crops, Jobs and Livelyhood'. Invited by the Bonn-based Centre for Development Research (ZEF), 300 practicians, academics, decision-takers, politicians and representatives of rural projects and village initiatives from 60 countries discussed, August 15 - 17, the problems and opportunities of rural regions. The discussion came only a few weeks after the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) held a dialogue conference on the related subject of 'Poverty reduction, social innovation and new coalitions'.

Today, 53 per cent of the world's six billion people still live on the land. Rural regions are important habitats worldwide, and most of the globe's valuable natural resources are found there. Rural areas ensure food for people worldwide. However, they are largely cut off from general progress, miss out on it, and sink into isolation, hopelessness and political insignificance. Globalisation finally finishes them off. All that contributes to a continuing flight from the land to increasingly sprawling megacities.

Will the rich and extremely diverse cultures of the world's rural regions disappear amid its accelerating transformation process? This scenario can be avoided only if living and working conditions on the land are adapted to the demands of our times, so that the distance from urban areas does not grow further.

For many urbanite decision-takers, the term 'village' still means backwardness, rigid traditions and rejection of technological innovation. On the other hand, rural areas have a great history of indigenous innovation. That is why in the next few decades they should be able to benefit from the bio-technological revolution and communication technologies.

Town and rural areas
are growing apart

In his opening speech at the conference, Prof. Klaus Töpfer, Director-General of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), summarised the rural regions' problems. He said the rural areas were falling more and more behind the town. Town and countryside were growing apart, particularly in terms of communication. While the town worked with the Internet, on the land there was mostly not even a telephone. There were many town twinnings, but no village partnerships.

Töpfer said the problems of rural people were growing dramatically, and solving them was a precondition for their survival. Because the court system in the country was underdeveloped, rural people could not assert claims against the town. Intensifying town-country relations therefore was very important. Töpfer concluded by saying that despite much rhetoric, he was optimistic that the well-prepared dialogue conference would put an end to current prejudices and point the way to sustainable approaches to solutions for the future of the rural areas.

'Science in Dialogue'
forums

The ZEF divided the first half of the conference into four sectoral forums, each consisting of several working groups, under the overall title of 'Science in Dialogue'. In the first forum, 'New Technologies and Agriculture', scientists discussed bio-technology, information and communication technologies and the future of agriculture.

Several scientists gave the role of bio-technology in agriculture great prospects of success. Agricultural researcher Prof. Clive James addressed bio-technology's importance for smallholders in particular. He said that in view of the drastic decline in arable land due to degradation and population growth - from 0.45 ha per capita in 1996 to 0.25 ha in 1998 and a projected 0.15 ha in 2025 - a substantial increase in agricultural production could be achieved only by adopting bio-technology and not using pesticides.

James said that was safer and more sustainable, and could also reduce the marked iron and Vitamin A deficiencies and malnutrition in the developing countries. Those countries would then also be less dependent on foreign currency inputs. China, for instance, had in recent years been able to reduce its use of insecticides by almost half. Prof. Ernst Kalm, of the University of Kiel, pointed out that bio-technology could in future also contribute to increasing animal production and food security by embryo cloning and cell multiplication.

The second forum focused initially on people, their activities and their impacts on natural resources. Many experts presented examples of sustainable energy systems and more effective soil conservation and water management, which were discussed in-depth. In the foreground were the causes of the ever more serious scarcity of water amid increasing consumption by industry and growing populations. Water shortages are seen as the main potential for conflicts in the 21st century, and thus they demand speedy solutions. Hans Aeppli of the German Bank for Reconstruction (KfW) explained, for example, the advantages of small-scale irrigation systems for groups of villages and individual farmers for increasing food production compared with problematical large-scale projects. He also pointed to the still enormous unused potential for irrigation.

The forum's second subject area dealt with the necessity of preserving genetic resources by gene banks and soil fertility maintenance methods in view of the ongoing severe loss of arable land due to erosion and wrong cultivation techniques. In this context, the address of Arba Diallo, Director-General of the Bonn-based UN Convention on Combating Desertification, on the still-spreading desertification in Africa drew great attention. The third forum covered the general institutional and political conditions needed to create a more attractive rural area. In the sector of 'Culture, Knowledge and Training', the speakers agreed that almost everywhere in rural areas education policy trailed the national policy by 15 years. Educational content was aligned entirely on town-dwellers. But because the same content was used to instruct rural children, they were alienated from their own culture, drawn by the attractions of the cities and persuaded to flee the land. In general, the speakers demanded that priority in educational efforts should be given to women and girls in rural areas because they were the basis and main upholders of local culture and the preservation of traditions and the family.

Politics must give priority
to strengthening rural areas

Ruth Engo-Tjega, of Cameroon, representing the organisation 'African Action on Aids', said it was important that people should listen much more to the villages. Huge amounts of resources were being wasted. She suggested that all students should spend at least a six-month practical training period in a village in order to counter alienation. In addition, local languages must be fostered in school lessons.

Prof. Michael Bohnet, Director-General in the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), in Bonn, summed up the forum's conclusions as follows:

Politics must promote local culture and architecture, push ahead with enabling self-help among rural people, invest more in the education of rural women and children, and expand agricultural research and advisory services. After all, the rural areas were the basis of human nourishment and natural resources. Furthermore, preference must be given to especially disadvantaged regions by sustainable interventions, more effective market access for agricultural products must be achieved, and the ecological system must be protected to safeguard and preserve rural people's existence, culture and inheritance.

Workshops brought academics
and practicians together

During the second half of the three-day Global Dialogue, decision-takers from rural regions, project staff, and managers and officials from commerce, industry and politics joined the academics in searching for sustainable solutions to the rural challenges of the 21st century. In many topic-related workshops, exemplary and often innovative rural projects were presented and commented on by representatives of government bodies, NGOs and other grassroots groups.

The participants heard from Robert D'Costa of the Watershed Organisation Trust, India, that a particularly impressive project was being implemented at Darewadi, in India. Due to overexploitation of nature, water scarcity and bad farming, the bases of life for the local people were almost totally destroyed. But after long and exhausting discussions they developed their own initiatives. Measures to save water, appropriate farming, soil conservation and village afforestation, which allowed vegetation to return gradually, took shape. However, the programme would have had no chance of success without the initiatives and promotion of the rural women. Advised by a number of local experts, 125 other villages in the province have followed Darewadi's successful example.

Global Focus -
visions for the future

The Global Dialogue concluded with a public, 90-minute television discussion on 'Visions for the future'. Leading figures such as Prof. Ernst-Ulrich von Weizsäcker, founder of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, Margarita Marino de Botero of the Club of Rome and the ZEF's Colombian consultant, and bio-technology expert Gerhard Prante of the Aventis chemicals company, argued vehemently over North-South problems and their visions for the 21st century.

Margarite de Botero criticised the rapid urbanisation and growth of city slums in the Third World, as well as the gaps between town and country opened up by the computer world. She said it was causing a scandalously great divide between them. People were worried by the unfamiliar, she added, and those on the land did not want to be dependent on a technology they did not understand. The technological connection to the land must be put in place, she said.

Prof. von Weizsäcker underscored the problem by pointing out that there were more telephone connections in the Manhattan district of New York than in the whole of Black Africa. He said that showed the size of the challenge and the great funds needed for the developing countries to catch up.

On the subject of food security, the representative of Aventis said bio-technology and improvements in breeding could arrest only some of the general decline in Third World production. Von Weizsäcker countered that basically there was no reason for hunger in the world; the problem was one of unequal distribution of food, as well as trade barriers. On the growing scarcity of water, he added overexploitation and excessive use of it must be stopped, and that water could no longer be supplied free of charge. Industrial water must also be brought back into the cycle.

Von Weizsäcker concluded that solving the many complex challenges facing the world required the input of wise, far-sighted and responsible politicians in the sense of good governance, without which substantial progress could not be made.