Rural/local development planning and sustainable management

We collaborate with governments, universities and companies in preparing development programmes with local, regional and national scopes, along with different policy assessment work in relation to regional and rural development in the EU, education, research and cooperation in development. These collaborative relationships have brought us to work with international organisations ¿such as the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and the European Union Directorate General for Agriculture - national governments¿ such as those in Spain, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay ¿and prestigious universities¿ such as Wageningen, Cork, Stanford Postgraduate School, UC. Berkeley, and UC. Los Angeles, and organised civil society ¿via University-Business Chairs, like the Fundación Ingenio Chair, Tatiana Pérez de Guzmán, Food Banks and ADESIMAN-LEADER and the Agri-Food Platform. We also collaborate with universities in Ecuador and Peru to facilitate processes for improving their research structures to adapt to the new challenges in society.

The aim of the Group is to address the problems connected to rural/local development in an interdisciplinary way. It does this in terms of the dramatic situations experienced in developing countries and also of the specific problems of the most disadvantaged regions in developed countries.

We seek to make the most of the professionals who are group members to search for solutions to these problems. The actions to be taken are not unique and independent of each other. On the contrary, instead of one-off actions, this is a package of projects and activities that must be rolled out simultaneously in order to eradicate the problems associated with underdevelopment. To do this, planning, management and assessment models are needed that, based on a knowledge of reality, improve the way of addressing the development programmes and project. The intention within the group is to collaborate on preparing suitable models for this planning, management and assessment, in addition to taking an interest in specific problems, such as the gender perspective, regional decentralisation and food safety.