Journal of Sustainable Rural Development
Volume:1 Issue: 1, Spring and Summer 2017

Sustainable development has been defined in many ways, but the most frequently quoted definition is from Our Common Future, also known as the Brundtland Report: "Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” In this regard, sustainable rural development has a distinctive role and can be defined as improving the quality of life for the rural people by developing capacities that promote community participation, health and education, food security, environmental protection, and sustainable economic growth; thereby enabling community members to leave the cycle of poverty and achieve their full potential. Sustainable development has received growing attention from academics, industry representatives, policy-makers, and so on. Sustainable development based research and education is the backbone of a society. In other words, science and research are critical to help meet the challenges for sustainable development, as it lays the foundations for new approaches and technologies to identify, clarify, and tackle global challenges for the future. Science and research can thus significantly contribute to sustainable development, but requires, to that end, a broad understanding of science as well. Scientific journals are periodical publications intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. These journals are very important in development and promotion of science and research. Journal of Sustainable Rural Development (JSRD) is an international, multidisciplinary, double-blind peer-reviewed, open-access journal published by the Iranian Association of Geography and Rural Planning. JSRD carries original and full-length articles that reflect the latest research and developments in both theoretical and practical aspects of environment, economy, and society with respect to sustainability. It provides an academic platform for professionals and researchers to contribute their innovative work in the broad field of sustainable rural development. Therefore, preference is given to articles that test, extend, or build strong theoretical frameworks while empirically investigate the issues with high importance for sustainable rural development theories and practices. JSRD calls for researchers and academician to submit their research papers in this journal about sustainable rural development.

Quality of life is a broad concept, which its importance is increasingly growing. This concept in general term is used to describe how humans meet their needs or the extent to which individuals and communities are satisfied with the realm of life. Because resource are always limited at all levels of planning, it must be based on the efficient use of resources. Therefore, all available rural resources and their relationships at various levels should be identified. That is because one factor or cause from a higher level as a modifier variable has an impact on the relationship of two dependent variable at a lower level and would strengthen or weaken this relationship.

Therefore, in this research factors affecting the “quality of life” were studied in rural areas of Kangavr City with an emphasis on location and in the form of multi-level (three levels) factors. Data structure is hierarchical and has common features in every level, in a way that 250 observations were classified in 76 villages and 5 rural districts.

The results show that individual factors affect the performance of higher-level variables i.e., village administration. And these two levels have an impact on the higher-level variables like the population density and so on.

Finally, the effects of villages and rural districts are significant, and have a significant effect on the predicted relationships.

The current paper aimed at developing a transport need index to measure the needs of transport disadvantaged groups in rural areas of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. This transport supply index, in turn, assesses the provision of transport services in these areas.

We adopted the index methods developed for Australian metropolitan areas to reflect the extent of the rural transport problem, the range of social needs groups of the rural areas, and the specialized types of services used in rural areas. A geographical information system is used to quantify the index values, assess transport needs and the spatial distribution of identified gaps between the levels of service supply.

The results of the current study highlighted that transport needs were spatially distributed across rural areas, but concentrated in certain coastal and inland areas, particularly the North-Western parts of NSW. These areas had very poor public transport options that were not likely to be improved without targeted community transport type projects and provisions of social services.

The developed indexes present a quantitative basis on which the extent of transport need and transport supply in an area can be compared with other areas. They are a robust mechanism for government and non-government agencies to address community needs in rural NSW through specialised transportation services, and allocate appropriate funding levels in a consistent and equitable manner. The ready availability of census data and other transport level of service data facilitate the application of this approach.

Rural economy depends substantially on agricultural activities. As Iran is situated on the belt of drought, there is a serious threat for rural economy, and as a consequence a threat for rural persistence and resilience. The current study aimed at evaluating the farmers’ resilience against social and economic consequences of drought.

It was a survey study including all farmer family breadwinners living in Sabzevar, Iran, among which 301 were selected from 14 villages to be studied. Statistical reliability of the social and economic consequences was 0.754 and 0.876, respectively. Single sample t test was used to evaluate the results of the survey. The study used 57 items and 14 components to assess the consequences of drought.

From the economical point of view, the average value for components of production value, production quality, cost of natural resources (losses), production costs, costs of living, and investment were 2.65, 2.08, 21.35, 31.37, 10.22, 5.53, and 2.97, respectively; and from the social point of view, the average value for components of quality of life, poverty, employment, mental stress, reduction of public security, increase of crime, and social damage were 13.12, 9.08, 6.01, 14.97, 8.94, 15.40, and 16.30, respectively.

The results obtained by t test showed that the studied villages were not resilient against drought. Two general approaches were finally suggested to cope with drought.

One of the strategies to develop rural regions in most countries is to promote rural tourism. One of the features of rural tourism is its fragmented physical nature; therefore, in recent years, the rural tourism networks are of great concern in this regard. In most countries, the importance of rural tourism networks concept is rising. In the economy of many countries, this concept works better in tourism than other sectors. An analytic approach on rural tourism networks and its application in the development of tourism is essential. One of the most important contributions of tourism is flourishing related and marginal businesses. In the current study and based on ground theory, we attempted to analyze rural tourism networks in mountainous-valley route of Haraz rural areas.

In-depth interviews and group discussions were conducted to collect data. The statistical population consisted of the tourism and related businesses and the samples were selected through the snowball effect sampling method among 216 local businesses. About 35.5 hours were spent to conduct interviews with 40 tourism businesses.

The most important network cooperation is found among the borrowing, manpower, information, consulting, revising, and trade.

In general, the obtained results indicated that regarding business network cooperation, the conditions were not in good condition.

Coping water scarcity and food production in Iran require some appropriate Futures Studies (FS) paradigm. Integral Futures Studies (IFS) is applied and examined for studying the futures of water supply for food production in I. R. of Iran.

Virtual workshop, as a web based foresight procedure, is developed and implemented according to IFS circumstances for a future based structured social dialogue, among Iranian stakeholders. The first phase of the foresight procedure (pre-foresight) lasted 6 months, 105 national stakeholders were registered to take part in online discussions, surveys, and workshops, and to share their ideas and opinions on future agendas and trends. During this phase, the objective and subjective parts of the knowledge on shaping the future were integrated into one system. Finally 36 volunteers evaluated the pre-foresight.

IWRM and AM are some global approaches to solve the water allocation challenges at watershed or national levels. Under such circumstances future studies needs to bring closer divergent views, promote understandings, and interests; strengthen their consensus on the future interests and benefits of the nation, and renew their commitment to the preservation and management of water resources. So IFS could regard as a more suitable paradigm through coping water challenges for food production at national level. Behind some special results, procedure results (5C) of this study were examined. The percentages of participants consensus on the effectiveness of the examined issues were as follows: 1) Promoting thinking about the future (91%); 2) Clarifying the effective factors (88%); 3) Promoting thinking systematically (91%); 4) Forming new networks and communications (78%); 5) Promoting social learning about the subject of the study (89%); 6) Promoting cooperation among the participants (72%); and 7) Promoting consensus among the relevant stakeholders (75%).

Finally, virtual workshop as a web based procedure and according to IFS circumstances, could promote a deep and continual structured and future oriented dialogue among the relevant stakeholders across the country for coping water challenges for food production at national level.

Sustainable housing can be considered as one of the important indicators of development and progress. Thus, identifying the characteristics and methods of providing sustainable housing is important. Sustainable housing is one of the basic needs which in terms of development and change in the living standards of rural areas displays varying aspects in old and new construction textures. Among the structural components of the village, sustainable housing is one of the most important ones and part of the overall identity of the village. Also, it is the illustration of functional integrity of the village texture. It seems that by passage of time, it has seen the most changes, which have caused a gap in the functional integrity of the structural texture of rural habitations. Therefore, the present study by using physio-environmental, physio-economic, and physio-social indicators, has assessed the sustainability of rural housing in the old and new structural textures in the villages of the central area of Kabudarahang Country. We tried to find out that with regard to the transformation in housing construction and structure, whether there is a significant difference between the sustainability of the old and new construction textures (sustainability of new and old housings).

10 villages and 300 households, including 150 households living in the old construction texture with traditional and old housing and 150 households of the residents living in the new construction texture with new housings were assessed separately.

The obtained results indicate a significant difference between old and new housings with regard to housing sustainability.

According to the analysis of responses given by households to questionnaires distributed among them, in the three dimensions of physio-environmental, physio-economic, and physio-social, the housings with old textures (old and traditional housing) possessed more sustainability degree compared to the new structural textures (new housing).

“My flower has only four thorns” expresses the vulnerability of plants confronted with a rate of destruction never experienced before, in spite of the valuable functions that they perform and the commercial value that they represent. In a short synthesis, the current article aimed at depicting an array of benefits and uses that flowers offer us, materially and emotionally, and introduce some movements that elect flowers as their symbol of a non-violent ideology.