Sustainable Development & Poverty Reduction: Background

	Sustainable Development & Poverty Reduction (SDPR) in South Asia:
	Background

Focus
IRFD is focusing on Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction in rural and urban communities by balancing economy, environment, and society with emphasis on the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG).

Goals
SDPR has the following aims for deprived communities, regions and remote geographic locations in the world:

	eradicate poverty
	educate the most needy people
	impart skills to maximize human potential
	create economic development opportunities
	environmental protection

This project intends to create a sustainable economic engine for local communities based on their local cultural foundations, which enables the protection of the environment as well as self sufficiency.

IRFD is preparing to implement projects in South Asia, with the intention of expanding SDPR to other regions of the World.

South Asia and the Development Context
Poverty is one of the most common factors that cuts across all countries in the South Asian region. According to the World Development Report, 43.5 percent of the world's poor lives in South Asia, earning less than $1 per day. On average, 31.7 percent of South Asian people (around 433 million) are living in abject poverty, particularly in rural areas (SAAPR 2003).

The rural poor in South Asia are characterized by a number of general economic, demographic and social features. The most common one being landlessness or limited access to land and other productive resources. Poor rural households tend to have larger families with higher dependency ratios, lower educational attainment and higher underemployment. The poor also lack basic amenities like piped water supply, sanitation and electricity.

Their access to credit, inputs and technology is severely limited and certain constraints, such as lack of information about markets, lack of business and negotiating experience and lack of a collective organization, deprive them of the power needed to interact on equal terms with the other, generally larger and stronger market intermediaries (IFAD 2001).

Cultural and social distance and discrimination are other factors that may also - at least partly - exclude the poor from markets. Low levels of social and physical infrastructure increase their vulnerability to famine and disease, especially in the mountainous and remote areas of the sub-region.