Sustainable Development in Poor Rural Areas

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The objective of the Sustainable Development in Poor Areas Project for China is to explore and pilot more effective and innovative ways of providing poverty reduction assistance to the poorest communities and households in Henan Province, Shaanxi Province and Chongqing Municipality (the Project Provinces) through community driven development and participatory approaches. There are five components to the project. Component one: community driven development (CDD). This component will support the development of basic rural infrastructure in poor villages through the provision of investment support and related technical assistance for the construction and improvement of, inter alia, village access roads, drinking water supply systems, rural sanitation infrastructure, electrification, communication infrastructure, school building construction and repair, small-scale agriculture production infrastructure, and basic housing repair. Component two: Community Development Financing (CDF) and capacity building for CDD and CDF. This component will address the current lack of basic income sources in remote villages by providing small block grants to communities to support household-level productive activities, and provide technical assistance and capacity building through two subcomponents: (a) provision of CDF financing to community cooperatives to finance CDF subgrants and/or CDF subloans in support of household-level productive activities; (b) provision of technical assistance and capacity building support at the village level to support the Project's CDD and CDF activities. Component three: Rural Migrants Support (RMS). This component will address the challenges associated with China's on-going large scale rural-to-urban migration, a defining factor of China's urbanization process, with the objective of exploring a replicable model which could be scaled-up nationwide. Component four: Sustainable Land Management and Adaptation (SLMA). This component will be co-financed by the global environment facility (GEF), and include three subcomponents: (a) designing and implementing SLMA pilot activities based on community participation through promoting adaptation measures in small infrastructure and agricultural improvement projects; and providing technical assistance to communities and township technical staff in the design, implementation, and monitoring of these SLMA pilot activities; and (b) disseminating the experience of implementation of the SLMA pilot activities and promoting the integration of SLMA intervention in the Project's CDD activities. Component five: project management and monitoring and evaluation. This component will facilitate the efficient implementation of the project and the coordination between the various government agencies at the national, provincial and local levels.