Addressing poverty and inequality in the rural economy from a global perspective

• Progress on rural poverty, inequalities and food security has been limited.
• Traditional place-neutral approaches have largely failed to deliver.
• Integrated, territorial approaches (TA) have become more mainstream as a result.
• Agriculture and diversification based strategies go hand in hand.
• Pressing need to elevate spatial inequalities in the post-2015 development agenda.

Recent decades have seen the rural areas of developing and emerging countries undergo significant structural changes. They are the source of several pertinent international concerns, including extreme poverty and hunger, and rising spatial and interpersonal disparities, challenges that national governments and the international community have made limited headway in alleviating to date. By analysing the range of rural development approaches implemented in recent decades, we develop a picture in which territorial approaches have become more mainstream. Since the turn of the century in particular they have gradually supplanted more traditional place-neutral approaches, which, we argue, have served to increase rural-urban disparities and exasperate the incidence of poverty in rural areas. Rural territorial development approaches, where able to mobilise sufficient participation and coordination between local stakeholders, civil society, and various multi-level actors, offer the most favourable means of gaining a better understanding of the many social, economic, institutional assets within a region. They can be harnessed to drive brands of regional development that are not only sustainable, but also more equitable and inclusive across different segments of the population and territories.