Institutional Sustainability and Rural Development: Issues for Asia and the Near East in the 1990s

摘要

The paper looks at some of the factors that affect institutional sustainability, making particular reference to Asia and the Near East. It focuses on two sets of institutions that are central to rural and agricultural development. The first set are colleges or universities that teach agricultural science and related subjects; the second set are public agencies responsible for integrated rural development projects (or what is often now called area or regional development). The focus on these two sets of institutions is in response to U.S. development strategy, which has given special attention to higher education and area development projects. Higher education, of course, is critical to the processes of technology transfer and agricultural diversification, while area development is central to better natural resource management and employment generation. The U.S. Agency for International Development's experiences, in turn, have generated numerous insights as to how to bolster educational and regional development institutions, and have also stimulated demand from the field for guidance about nourishing the types of institutions in the future.