What’s the issue?
Across the OECD, rural regions make up approximately 80 percent of all the territory and are home to approximately 30 percent of the population. These lands, and the people that live on them, are the source of almost all the food, fresh water, energy, lumber, metals, minerals and other resources that make our way of life possible. They are also, where we find unspoilt natural beauty, wildlife and Indigenous cultures. Rural places are, in short, vital to the prosperity and well-being of all people.In the past decades, benefits from globalisation and digitalisation have disproportionately flowed to metropolitan regions. High-elderly dependency ratios, lack of infrastructure (including broadband) the shocks of the 2008 financial crisis and the current COVID-19 crisis are deeply shaping the economic landscape of rural communities. This is creating tensions in many countries as rural people feel that they are being left behind. Yet, while rural places are not without their challenges, they are also unquestionably places of opportunity. Well-designed rural policies can leverage local assets and use stakeholder coordination to make rural places more prosperous and offer greater well-being to residents.
Why attend?
At the launch event, we will present the latest iteration of the rural development framework – Rural Well-being: Geography of Opportunities. The framework is a tool to better understand and tackle the particular challenges and leverage opportunities that are present in rural places. The new framework broadens the scope of analysis, looking beyond the usual economic factors such as productivity and income; it encompasses a multi-dimensional approach that takes into account the environmental and social dimensions of well-being to deliver a more holistic, people-centred understanding of rural development. Furthermore, the framework recognises that effective rural policies require the engagement of a broad array of actors and multi-level governance mechanisms. Participants will learn about the new role of rural development policy for OECD governments. The OECD’s framework Rural Well-being: Geography of Opportunities serves as the common thread for the webinar, providing timely guidance focused on the well-being of citizens and the untapped potential and opportunities of rural places. The report will be made available on 5th October 2020.
Program
13:45-14:00 Registration (please join the meeting 15 minutes before the start)
14:00-14:15 Opening remarks
Lamia Kamal-Chaoui Director, Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities(CFE), OECD
Antonio Walker, Minister for AgricultureChile
Jose Enrique Garcilazo, Head of Regional and Rural Programme, CFE, OECD
14:15-14:25 Presentation of Rural Well-being Framework Presentation
Alain Dupeyras Head of Regional Development and Tourism Division, CFE, OECD
14:25-14:55 Place-based policy at work Presentation
Ufuk Akcigit, Arnold C. Harberger Professor of Economics, University of Chicago, USA
Alessandra Faggian, Professor of Applied Economics, Director of Social Sciences and Vice Provost for Research at the Gran Sasso Science Institute, L’Aquila, Italy
14:55-15:00 Closing remarks
Peter Wostner, Chair of the OECD Working Party o Rural Policy Committee and Senior Researcher at the Institute of Macroeconomic Analysis and Development, Republic of Slovenia
More information Here