October 1, 2009

The Wheel of Development: Rolling Forward, by Julia Margulies


Julia Margulies is the Director General of the Weitz Center for Development Studies, Rehovot ,Israel.

The Weitz Center for Development Studies, a non-governmental, non-profit, public organization, was founded in 1963 in Rehovot to engage in professional activities related to regional urban and rural development in Israel and in other developing countries. The Center was established and later headed (until his death in1998) by Professor Raanan Weitz, one of the leading figures in the planning and development of rural Israel since its independence and until well into the 1990's.

Since its establishment, the Center has been dedicated to the study of rural and peripheral areas in Israel, through extensive research, and has become one of the important sources of information and knowledge on those areas for Israeli students, scholars and practitioners. Moreover, the Weitz Center has adopted the mission of sharing the knowledge acquired in Israel in this field with less developed countries, adapting a working plan to each country's specific conditions, and implementing objectives through an extensive program of training, research, planning and consultancy activities.

The Center has gained international recognition in the development field: In 1972, the Social and Economic Council of the United Nations recognized and recommended the Center’s International Postgraduate Training Program in Integrated Regional Development. In 1991, the Weitz Center Library was designated as the World Bank Depository Library in Israel.


The Rehovot Approach of Integrated Regional Development (IRD)

The Weitz Center formulated the internationally recognized “Rehovot Approach” which promotes integrated socio-economic development at regional and local levels, as a long term measure for improving adaptation to new functions and demands deriving from changes in the global economy. The approach's rural-urban linkage implies that the development of rural areas is imperative in order to secure the quality of life in cities. Rural areas in most developing countries have been neglected – agriculture does not allow a fair standard of living, other sources of income have not been developed, and accessibility to basic human needs – education, health, potable water and sanitation – is poor. As a result, many human indicators such as malnutrition, life expectancy, mortality rates and illiteracy are much poorer than at the urban centers.

Moreover, the majority of poor people in the world live in rural areas, and those who wish to improve their situation have only one path: emigration to urban centers, preferably metropolitan areas. However, these centers are not able to absorb the influx of population, and they suffer in return from problems of poor infrastructures, lack of housing, insufficient services and low personal security.

The main question is not if rural development is necessary, but how to do it best. The apparent shortcomings of previous strategies in tackling the challenges of poverty reduction and equitable development – as well as universal processes such as democratization, decentralization and globalization – have had significant influences on the attitudes towards development in recent years.

It is widely recognized today that poverty reduction requires going beyond a sectoral approach to rural development. The totality of activities in a particular region needs to be promoted in order for rural development to be successful. Mechanisms must be developed for linking together agriculture, agro-industries, infrastructure, health, education, information and other areas with a common goal of raising incomes and creating jobs in rural areas.

For many years, attempts have been made to get the wheel of rural development rolling by reinforcing one segment of the economy. These attempts have in most part failed. The development strategy promoted by the Weitz Center maintains that, in order to move forward, the wheel of development needs the simultaneous strength of all the segments pushing behind it. The Rehovot Approach is based on three assumptions:

1. Agricultural growth is the key to rural development;
2. The development of agriculture requires concomitant development of secondary and tertiary sectors;
3. Social forces play an important role in agricultural development. Since agricultural production is carried out by a multitude of individual producers, their willingness and ability to participate in any process of change is a sine qua non.

Why is it so important to develop all the sectors in coordination? First, agriculture does not develop by itself, but requires a system of support such as professional advice, facilities which enable access to markets, and so on. Second, even when agriculture develops, many of the hands working in it will be idle unless alternative income generating activities are promoted as well. Developing other activities, such as agro-industries, will create working places and add to internal capital of the rural areas. Third, the rural community also needs services such as education, health, and public facilities.

The Weitz Center for Development Studies has translated this approach into a planning methodology.

The IRD Methodology regards planning in terms of a cross-functional process. Regions are viewed as the meeting points between economic opportunities and social and environmental concerns. The regional development plan presents itself as the point of intersection at the regional level of the two planning functions – the vertical and the horizontal. The concept of cross function permits the achievement of simultaneous consistency between the following factors:

· Coordination and interrelationship between the various levels, from national to regional and local (usually national, regional, district, city and village);
· Coordination and relationship between the three economic sectors, primary (agriculture), secondary (industry), and tertiary (services);
· Integration within the regional plan of the economic, social, organizational and spatial aspects.

The IRD approach avoids the adoption of a structured “recipe” for regional development. Rather, a flexible approach, based on local conditions and predominant institutional structures, is embraced.
Moreover, the Rehovot Approach stresses the fact that development planning is a dynamic process that enhances the capacity of territories to contribute to the creation of economic activities, and to attract investments in competitive national and international environments.

Training Activities

Since its establishment more than 40 years ago, the Weitz Center has been involved in the dissemination of the Israeli experience in regional and local development among developing countries through training and related activities. Over 5,000 professionals from some 80 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Pacific, and Europe have graduated from this program.

This role has been carried out within the framework of MASHAV – The Center for International Cooperation of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The experience gained by Israeli development institutions has been used as a practical example for the thousands of professionals that have been trained in the Center. Professionals from both national and non-governmental institutions take an active role in transferring their knowledge via the training program to the international participants.

All Weitz Center courses are interdisciplinary by nature, and participants are professionals in the fields of agriculture, economy, sociology, civil and industrial engineering, environmental studies, and more. Further on, following requests from individual governments, international organizations, and NGO’s, the Weitz Center conducts tailor-made courses designed according to specific needs of the commissioning organization. These courses are conducted either at the Weitz Center or onsite, and include a follow-up component.

Planning for the Future

The globalization process has not diminished the importance of local development; on the contrary. Future efforts must concentrate on strengthening local capacities to cope with globalization and influence its processes. However, this is not sufficient. Efforts must be made in regional cooperation among developing countries, as a way of creating markets and common projects - based on the utilization and positive exploitation of local resources and potentialities. In this way, the wheel of development will gain the momentum to roll on.

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