In both industrialized and developing countries, large numbers of the poor live in rural areas. In some cases, rural manufacturing and service industries are important sources of livelihood. In many others, work related to agriculture and forestry predominates and depends on natural resources. Nearly everywhere, these natural resources are under threat from environmentally unsound practices.

In many cases, the primary cause is excessive commercial use, both from within and outside local communities. Frequently, however, poor rural inhabitants themselves cause environmental degradation because their short-term survival depends on using resources in unsustainable ways. Forests are lost through overcutting for fuel, scarce water supplies are dissipated, and lands are severely eroded because of deforestation. These unsatisfactory rural conditions often induce household members to migrate in search of jobs and economic opportunity. Rural women frequently stay behind to tend fragile lands and care for children.

In addition to the problems of resource access and use, members of rural communities often are poorly serviced by government programs intended to deliver health, education, credit, and other benefits.

Members of minority groups or indigenous communities frequently suffer additional disadvantages, including official refusal to recognize customary rights and traditional uses of their habitat. Examples include the flooding of Indian lands for new dams in Latin America, and rapid deforestation threatening the livelihoods of indigenous peoples in Southeast Asia.

The diversity of rural communities and their economies and the multiple constraints faced by poor people living there continue to perplex many policy makers. Only rarely have government programs been designed with a sure grasp of the realities of rural poverty and with participation from rural people.

Although their problems are vast, rural communities around the globe have formal and informal leaders, rich and poor, women and men, who are struggling to improve current conditions. And, contrary to conventional wisdom, there are many effective community-based organizations in rural areas: women's groups, informal credit associations, labor organizations, and development committees. A considerable number of rural people in developing and developed countries have formed community organizations or joined with existing nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to help organize credit, create jobs, improve the environment, and engage in other development activities. A few creative policy makers are introducing new ways to deliver services to their rural constituents, and a small number of talented academics and analysts are exploring the character and extent of rural poverty and the environmental troubles associated with it.

The Foundation's efforts to improve the opportunities of rural people throughout the world involve close links with rural leaders, community-based organizations, NGOs, academic groups, and staff of government agencies. In partnership, the Foundation works to add to knowledge about rural problems, to strengthen and reorient existing organizations, to create needed institutional arrangements, and to test new policy ideas and programs.

To accomplish those objectives the Rural Poverty and Resources program is organized