Rural poor devise best programmes to help themselves, UN says

Programmes to eradicate hunger and poverty are more effective when the poor help to plan and implement them, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) says.

In this regard, it has released a CD-ROM with 135 examples of villagers working together to increase their livelihood.

"A key FAO rural development priority is to improve participation of less influential stakeholders in decision-making and delivery of support services through decentralization and good regional and local governance," FAO expert Ana Lucia Guerrero says.

"Long-term sustainability in FAO projects can be ensured by strengthening local institutional capacities for improving the livelihoods of the rural poor, particularly women farmers and other vulnerable groups."

In some 500 semi-arid villages in the Aravalli Hills, Alwar District in India's Rajasthan State, villagers have collaborated under the leadership of a non-governmental organization (NGO) to revive their traditional ways of water harvesting and restoring low groundwater, FAO says.

In this way, the local farmers have been able to withstand subsequent years of drought.

"Studies show that the village domestic product has increased in proportion to the investments made in water conservation," FAO says. "With dozens of villages undertaking water-harvesting activities in the same watershed, the five rivers in the area are no longer 'monsoonal drains' and flow round the year."