Journal of Sustainable Rural Development
Volume:2 Issue: 1, Aug 2018

The study sought to identify the most reported relevant drivers of housing deficit in Ghana from empirical studies and to be guided by them to propagate practical micro and macro levels housing strategies that could be pursued by households, communities, and government to address the housing needs of both rural and urban households. The review makes a distilling contribution to the housing literature advancing the critical drivers of housing deficit and propagating the dire need for resilient housing remedies in Ghana.

The study adopted an exploratory research design and mainly reviewed relevant housing literature comprising of scholarly articles, research papers, policy documents, conferences proceedings and dissertations. A thematic content analysis was undertaken to facilitate the mapping out of the interconnected web of drivers of the housing deficit.

The review of the literature indicated that housing deficit in Ghana is driven by a complex web of broad factors of demographic, financial, land, planning and policy drivers. It was also identified that previous research mainly focused on state-centred approach to the housing deficit and neglected the contributions and challenges of individual or community level housing delivery.

Mass social housing is resistant to policy interventions and national housing policies have failed to rescue the housing situation. Consequently, housing policy intervention should shift attention from state-centric housing model to individual or community level housing construction, largely because the interplay of the micro and macro level housing remedies have the capability of providing a resilient remedy to housing deficit in Ghana

This study has been conducted with the overall objective of identifying the ecological knowledge of rural women, specifically their knowledge of local pedology, through a gender analysis approach.

The study adopts an exploratory, descriptive-analytical method, using both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. The population of the study includes female-headed households in villages with a population of more than 30 families in Nishapur and Firuzeh where women are familiar with farming activities and have actively participated in the agricultural production. To determine the sample size, first, through Cochran’s sample size formula, 22 villages were selected out of 357 villages in the population. Then, of the total number of 8810 women in the sample villages, 150 were selected through simple random sampling for questioning and semi-structured interviews.

The findings revealed that the level of rural women’s awareness of their ecological environment is relatively high, which is due to living experience in rural areas for centuries. This experience has been orally transmitted from one generation to another.

Their knowledge of local pedology is also high, nearly conforming to the scientific classifications of soil. If combined with the official knowledge, it can be used to complement the data in local studies and in the sustaining of natural resources.

One of the main challenges of water resource management in rural areas, especially in arid and semi-arid regions of Iran, is the disconcerted management in governmental executive departments, including the Water Supply Organization, which is an executive department under the Ministry of Energy, and the Department of Policy Management and Operations, which is affiliated to the Ministry of Agriculture. There are also rural water users who play a role in this challenge. They are actually the rural communities in different forms and compositions with different production methods in the popular sector.

Documentary and field studies were conducted to examine the role of participatory planning in integrated water resources management on the purpose of achieving sustainable rural development.

In a systematic approach to water resources, which always calls for integrated water resources management, there is a loop of connections among the required actors and forces. Participatory planning by designing livelihoods and sustainable production patterns (i.e. using the methods and techniques of the participatory planning of local communities), and the establishment and strengthening of facilitation systems make good links in the integrated management of water resources in rural areas.

The results of the studies carried out in eastern Iran, including the provinces of northern Khorasan, Khorasan Razavi, South Khorasan and Sistan and Baluchestan, indicate that informed, all-inclusive, and rural-based participatory techniques and facilitation measures in organizations and systems within the framework of participatory planning techniques can facilitate the achievement of a sustainable approach to integrated water resources management, which ultimately achieves more success in sustainable rural development.

The purpose of this study was to design a model to develop a series of businesses for the cluster processing of garden products in Kermanshah province and its relationship with rural development. This study is based on a qualitative research design and the grounded theory method. The study population included the experts of the industrial town and the horticulture industry affiliated to the Agriculture Organization of Kermanshah province as well as cluster developers in the province. They were selected through purposeful sampling. A total of 83 concepts related to the research topic were extracted through open coding. These concepts were formulated in 23 subcategories that formed the conceptual basis for the cluster development of businesses in garden products. Geographic focus, trust, cooperation and competition, opportunities and challenges facing businesses as causal conditions, entrepreneurship and collective identity, access to appropriate infrastructures and markets, regional economic prosperity and access to appropriate technology, cluster development agents, startups, existence of boycott and climate change are the tenets, concepts, and phenomena that need the attention or support of the government and the institutions involved. Also, business synchronization, training of the workforce and effective provision of business services are considered as the interaction strategies for the cluster development of horticultural products in Kermanshah province. The outcome of such a state of affairs would be agricultural development, economic development, market development, human development and socio-cultural development. Designing this native model can set an example to follow by rural development planners, industrial towns, the Agricultural Organization, the practitioners of the related businesses, and gardeners

Rural industrialization is a means of technical change to improve the quality of life for the current generation in rural areas. One of the most important problems in many developing countries is that of unemployment. This paper reports a survey conducted in Farahan industrial area in Iran through which the impact of industrial areas on the development of rural regions was investigated as a case study.

The population of the research included 236 employees selected in the industrial area. A researcher-made questionnaire was used to collect the data.

According to the results of the factor analysis, economic, social, and infrastructural factors explain 61% of the industrial impact on rural development. The economic factor with an impact of 29% is the most important factor. The social and infrastructural factors with impacts of 23% and 9.3% are found respectively as the second and the third influential factors in the rural industrialization of villages in Farhan County.

To alleviate the employment problem in rural areas, setting up industries or expanding non-farm jobs can be a logical way out of the problem. Also, to raise rural people’s income and increase their tendency to stay in villages, a planned strategy is required for rural industrialization.

Owing to the vital role of rural tourism in the resurgence of rural economies, rural settlements have been encouraged to incorporate it into their local economies. This paper examines the rural settlements around the metropolitan city of Mashhad in the northeast of Iran to determine the role of tourism in creating sustainable economic capacities in rural areas.

The data were collected through a field study of 237 selected households to evaluate the research variables. Two models were applied to test the hypotheses.

It is shown that there are relationships among the variables and that rural tourism can lead to the expansion of sustainable capacities through economic diversification, entrepreneurship, and the production of local capital. Indeed, rural tourism is found as a central phenomenon that can create new opportunities in rural settlements.

Rural tourism indirectly promotes rural sustainability. The promotion of diverse economic sectors is highly significant for building rural sustainable capacities.