land

Editorial
Sustainable Rural Development: Strategies, Good Practices
and Opportunities
Ana Nieto Masot * and José Luis Gurría Gascón

Department of Art and Territorial Sciences, University of Extremadura, 10071 Cáceres, Spain; [email protected]
* Correspondence: [email protected]

In 2020, a special issue titled “Sustainable Rural Development: Strategies, Good

Practices and Opportunities” was launched, in which 16 papers were published. The aim
of this monograph is to study a problem that is occurring on a global scale and, above
all, in the most developed countries, which is the population emigrate from rural areas to
urban areas due to the labour and service opportunities offered by the latter [1,2]. This is
causing a demographic deterioration of rural areas due to the abandonment in large areas
of numerous villages, and those that remain show high rates of ageing, masculinisation
or low demographic growth [3–5]. In addition, and interrelated with this demographic
deterioration, there was economic [6] and environmental degradation [7–9]. Rural areas are
territories with increasingly lower purchasing power, job opportunities and services for the
population [10] which are classified as “spaces in crisis” [11–13]. In addition, and due to the
abandonment of agricultural holdings [14,15], it is causing problems such as the increase
in desertification, deforestation and even risk phenomena such as forest fires [16–19].
The aim of this special issue was to present, on the one hand, contributions in which
different initiatives or projects are managed to reduce the demographic, economic and



social imbalances between rural and urban areas. On the other hand, it aimed to present


some studies that highlight the weaknesses that certain projects are having in achieving
Citation: Masot, A.N.; Gascón, J.L.G. the same objectives. The papers presented are very varied and provide cases in a wide
Sustainable Rural Development: variety of territories, in European, American or Asian regions where there are rural areas
Strategies, Good Practices and
in crisis and, a review [20] on the opportunities that may arise for rural areas to introduce
Opportunities. Land 2021, 10, 366.
integration of technology such as Internet networks, telecommuting, distance-learning
https://doi.org/10.3390/land10040366
education, the use of electric cars, etc. to achieve development.
There are strategies focused on achieving rural development through the promotion of
Received: 22 March 2021
activities complementary to agriculture. Agriculture was the predominant activity in rural
Accepted: 23 March 2021
areas until decades ago [21] and has become a minority activity due to the transformations
Published: 2 April 2021
of the global economy and its greater mechanisation [22] and it does not generate enough
income to sustain the population in rural areas. For this reason, the agricultural sector
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral
with regard to jurisdictional claims in
should be complemented with other economic activities in rural areas, as recommended
published maps and institutional affil-
by organisations such as the EU [21–23] and the OECD [2,24–26]. Thus, there are papers
iations.
in which different types of complementary activities, such as rural tourism, the revalua-
tion of natural heritage, the promotion of agroecological products, the transformation of
agricultural areas into industrial land, the introduction of ICTs and internet access in rural
areas, improve their communications and teleworking or the design of sustainable housing
that can fundamentally attract new settlers. In addition, some papers that have focused on
Copyright: © 2021 by the authors.
initiatives with new models of development, such as Leader at European level or the design
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
of smart villages, have been put forward. As a complement, other papers have focused on
This article is an open access article
distributed under the terms and
the design of indicator models to measure the sustainable rural development strategies.
conditions of the Creative Commons
In the following paragraphs, the main results of the papers presented are detailed.
Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// In Spain, there are cases presented such as the strategies carried out in the rural and
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ coastal communities of Galicia [27], where the aim has been to achieve complementary
4.0/). incomes for fishermen by means of the diversification of the Common Fisheries Policy aid

Land 2021, 10, 366. https://doi.org/10.3390/land10040366 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/land

Land 2021, 10, 366 2 of 5

(CFP). It focused on creating synergies between the fishing sector and tourism and trying
to implement a fishing tourism. However, its results are not yet as expected in terms of
employment despite the financial support, not only from EU aid, but also from the regional
government. This is due to the fishermen’s lack of experience and previous training in
tourism activities, their advanced age, the irregular distribution of these activities and the
regulatory restrictions of the Spanish legal system that made it very difficult for people
other than the crew to embark on boats dedicated to fishing as their main activity.
There is a study about Murcia [28], which analyses the transformation of large areas
in this region into irrigated land over the last 30 years (the majority of which are former
rainfed areas). The conclusions presented in this work show that although at an economic
level they are obtaining high profitability and favouring the stabilisation of the population
in this region, at an environmental level and due to the water deficit in this region, the
consequences are not as beneficial. They present an excessive dependence on water
transfers from hydrographic basins in other regions such as those of the Tagus river, an
over-exploitation of aquifers and the reduction of natural flows and, lastly, the possibility
of the disappearance of these areas in future decades if these external transfers diminish.
LEADER programme aid and their entrepreneurs are analysed in Andalusia [29]. The
authors focus on two aspects: social and spatial disparities in the distribution of funds
and the success or failure of the projects granted in the period 2007–2015. In the results on
failed projects, those that were granted but not executed, it is determined that this was due
to different causes: the degree of rurality, women and young people and the distance to
cities had higher failure rates, and therefore those placed with a higher success rate were
the projects located in peri-urban areas.
Being Extremadura the study area, four papers are presented. The first one focuses
on the analysis of the LEADER programme [30] in a mountain territory, based on the
intangible aspect of the design and success of these development programmes (less stud-
ied because most approaches have focused on economic aspects). Using a qualitative
methodology with surveys of relevant actors who have participated in the process (public
and government sectors, businessmen, associations), it has been determined that aspects
such as the contribution of LEADER to the county identity are well valued, but others,
such as the participation of the local population in decision-making, are still considered to
be scarce.
The second one [31] shows the success that a polycentric system of small towns well
distributed throughout the territory can help to maintain the rural population in certain
areas located in Extremadura through rural–urban partnerships and integrated territorial
investments. A polycentric system can help in the design of new political strategies in the
fight against the demographic challenge and in the recovery of the so-called “empty Spain”.
The third paper [32] focuses on how hunting tourism in rural areas with a deep-
rooted hunting tradition is favouring the introduction of new incomes by creating an
accommodation infrastructure. The results of this paper (carried out with questionnaires
and statistical techniques) show that hunting tourists also take advantage of their stay to
carry out other activities in the area, which can produce synergies with other sectors such
as restaurants and leisure activities complementary to hunting.
Finally, the fourth analyses [33] the business agglomerations in rural districts (LAG) of
LEADER. A typology of three classes according to their number of companies, employment,
specialization, income generated, weight within the region and their degree of innovation
is created. The results show those areas where there are booming industrial sectors related
to a specialisation sector, mostly agri-food or meat, and which can be exploited by the rural
development strategies of the rural districts in their investments.
A new composite indicator of sustainable rural development was established for
Aragón [34]. It is based on the vulnerability of the ecosystem services being designed.
This indicator is tested in 10 study areas and results in a ranking that produces a greater
disparity in levels of development when vulnerability is added to the process, suggesting
Land 2021, 10, 366 3 of 5

that the environmental dimension and the perspective from which it is conceived and
applied are important in approaching sustainable rural development.
The activities that have enhanced the value of territorial heritage in declining areas are
analysed in Castilla la Mancha [35]. It highlighted through the creation of a co-operation
strategy between two counties that have a mining park and a Geopark, both recognised
by UNESCO as World Heritage Sites. This strategy of harnessing the potential synergy
between the two resources and offering a shared quality tourism resource has also been
developed in collaboration between the institutions (top-down approach) and supported
by the local population (bottom-up) as co-operative strategies that aim to minimise depop-
ulation processes in areas in crisis.
Outside Spain but within in Europe, a paper about Poland [36] is presented. It is one of
the initiatives being promoted by the EU, the design of smart villages, where establishing
new technologies and an efficient internet network could favour the maintenance of
the population in rural areas. In this work and using detailed socio-economic data, an
association has been established between poor internet access and rural decline. The
pre-liminary findings of implementing smart villages in Poland present theoretical and
methodological dilemmas, but these are expected to be overcome as the implementation of
these initiatives helps to encourage other areas to participate because of improvements in
their economic incomes and maintenance of the population.
About America, there are two papers. The first is about Mexico [37], and more specifi-
cally in rural areas of the Yucatan Peninsula, where the aim has been to achieve sustainable
rural development by supporting agroecological products. In this study, interviews were
carried out to analyse the role of entrepreneurs and their vision of public policies in the
promotion of this activity in order to achieve development. The visions obtained were
pessimistic because there is still a policy of little support for these activities, inadequate
management and trust in the public management and in the structure of the sector itself. In
addition, the entrepreneurs say they encounter other problems as the still low profitability
due to an insufficient commercial distribution network, the lack of ecological awareness
among consumers and the lack of training of the farmers themselves when it comes to
carrying out their projects.
The second in the USA [38] is a case study on new sustainable residential construction
in rural areas with a pilot project in Texas. They analysed the most efficient materials and
energy systems with the lowest economic cost. It is to show a model that in the medium
term recovers the additional investment in the construction of this sustainable housing and
that positively affects the environment by reducing pollution and the use of non-renewable
energies. As a proposal, the authors argue that administrations should promote regulations
and codes that advocate the implementation of this type of construction in rural areas that
can encourage new settlers to move in.
Finally, three papers are in Asia, two of them in China and another in Kazakhstan.
The first one in China has focused [39] on the leasing of forestland by farmers for
sustainable harvesting and income extension and the factors that contribute to its success.
The results show that the age and educational level of the farmers, the proportion of income
from other non-agricultural sources, the benefits they obtain from these leases and whether
institutional and market factors facilitate the procedures (simpler in some areas than in
others) have encouraged them to expand their income with other activities carried out on
the leased forest land.
The second one in China [40] has focused on designing a weighted geographical
regression model to analyse a pilot land reform system in 25 cities in the Dingzhou area,
consisting of the transfer of industrial land to agricultural land. Positive correlations will
be obtained with the price of industrial transfer land in those areas with demographic
and economic growth, greater population density, health resources and proximity to cities
because they are the most demanded and most profitable. It can be a reference model for
the sustainable use of industrial land.
Land 2021, 10, 366 4 of 5

The paper of Kazakhstan [41] is about the agricultural intensification of peri-urban

areas in the Shortandy district based on an integrated study of land use dynamics and
sustainable development indicators (SDI). The results show that the increase of agricultural
land in peri-urban areas is achieving economic, social and environmental development.
Therefore, the methodological approach can be a starting point for similar studies in other
areas and also these new uses can produce economic and social development in declining
rural areas which, due to their proximity to the city, can take advantage of this proximity
to produce flows between them.
The papers in this special issue evidence the many public and private strategies that are
being pursued to achieve sustainable rural development in declining areas. The diversity
of approaches and challenges offer a vision of the practical application of these strategies
and the obstacles or difficulties that many of them are having to achieve their objectives.
All of these strategies intended to achieve economic dynamism that is respectful of the
environment and from there to be able to reduce the regressive demographic processes
in rural areas. These are different approaches that allow us to contribute, from scientific,
holistic and multidisciplinary knowledge, new strategies that can help decision making
in public policy managers and in equitable planning and management strategies. It is a
current issue that can still be further developed in new special monographs due to the
numerous initiatives and projects that are being carried out.

Funding: This research has had the support and funding of the European Regional Development
Fund (ERDF), European Social Fund (ESF) and Government of Extremadura (Spain) funded this
research and the APC to the DESOSTE research group (Grant number GR18052).
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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