English
Spanish
German

Time To Change!

Population growth, advancing natural resource degradation, increasing prices for agricultural inputs, climate change...: the search for options to use remaining natural resources more sustainably and efficiently is becoming throughout the world ever more important. This is even more the case for rural communities in developing countries, which often strongly rely on locally available natural resources for their livelihoods.

The widely used approach of supporting smallholder communities` based on traditional "needs"- assessments and/ or the promotion of expensive "modern external inputs"- often fails to produce lasting positive results.

Instead  fostering rural communities`self-reliance and climate change resilience depends -apart from generally supportive frame-conditions e.g. with regard to land tenure and security- in first place on the widespread application of land management approaches, that support both: the more careful and efficient utilization of locally available natural resources.

Even in highly degraded areas, often at least a few innovative rural smallholders exist, who out of their own initiative have created impressive practical examples of improved natural resource management approaches. The experiences of such local innovators can play a very important role for the development and promotion of improved land management patterns at a wider scale.

All in all in many cases there is a lot that can and in fact should be done to enhance the efficiency and sustainable positive impact of many rural development interventions. Time to act!

Down to Earth Consult

supports activities to foster the design and implementation of rural development interventions in the fields of land restoration, improved natural resource management, constructive handling of disaster risks and enhancing climate change resilience.

Technically, rather than focussing on the promotion of expensive, sophisticated solutions, which might be very efficient in theory but difficult to multiply on a large scale in the context of poor rural communities, Down to Earth Consult emphasizes and concentrates on the development and promotion of options that are comparatively simple, cost-effective and easy to replicate.