ABSTRACT
Rural sustainable economic development challenges Rural watersheds confront the myriad problems of rural economic development. Rural economies are under steady competitive pressure from urban areas, where businesses benefit from the economies of agglomeration, have enough customers to attain increasing returns to scale, and have been honed by local competitive pressures. These urban attractions to business have been made increasingly accessible to people in rural areas by the steady decline in transportation costs. Rural areas have emptied as their residents have responded to the lure of cities and their close surroundings. The firms remaining in rural areas are likely to be small, and to lack sufficient demand to hold a supplier base. Furthermore, wages are likely to be low. The low wages attract some businesses and are offset, to some extent, by the low cost of living and the high quality of life (Kilkenny 2008). However, low wages do diminish the market for local retailers. Rural areas bring us into contact with nature, and provide a reprieve for the resident and harried urban tourist alike. However, those welcoming open spaces that envelop the visitor have the side effect of producing obstacles to many forms of economic activity. The sparse, often scattered populations translate into the economic barriers of thin markets and relatively long traveling distances to markets, work, or childcare. Public transport, if it exists, is destined to be infrequent and to have a limited route. For single parents, the childcare and transport problems are especially onerous. Childcare, when it is available, may not coincide with employment schedules. Also, the location of childcare may lie on a different route from that to work, creating the necessity of extra transport time. It is highly unlikely that any public transportation that might exist would have stops at both the place of work and the location of childcare (Hoffman 2005). One attraction of the small communities in rural areas is their potential for community and informal connections among residents. The nature of their external connections, however, can both isolate and burden them. Residents may well lack connections to people and organizations in other places, limiting their access to information (Hoffman 2005; Partridge 2006). The rural community’s connections to the larger economy through imports of products and services, necessitated by the paucity of local production, result in a weak local multiplier
as income inflows quickly depart to purchase imports. Furthermore, because local businesses often operate below full capacity, gains in local spending do not guarantee increased hiring (Barkin 2003; Kilkenny 2008). The slow response of rural areas to general economic stimuli in the US in the late twentieth century is not surprising. National expansions reach them only slowly, and encounter numbers of barriers when they do arrive (Partridge 2006). Recommendations by rural economic experts for policies to overcome the stagnation and poverty of rural areas identify place-specific aid as a supplement to general growth policies. Aid to local employers, especially those in businesses that are growing nationally, is recommended as a policy to bolster local employment. This is because news of available local jobs spreads by word of mouth, but tends not to reach outside areas. Commuting distances to the rural area also reduce outsider interest in the new work. Experts also recommend aid for childcare and transport, to help single mothers obtain work, as policies likely to increase rural employment (Partridge 2006). Engaging residents in local development efforts and involving them in networking with other areas are two more policies considered to be useful. The intergenerational interactions and intercommunity networking can increase exposure of rural residents to persons with more developed skills, and provide learning opportunities. The process will encourage local human capital development, which in turn enhances the attraction of the area (Arnold and Dewees 1997; Kilkenny 2000; Partridge 2006; Sargent et al. 1991; Schaeffer and Loveridge 2000). The combination of these policies would also develop the capacity of rural areas for positive milieu effects which could promote development. In contrast to the recommended infusion of aid to rural areas, emphasis on individualism in US political culture has instead devolved responsibilities from the central towards local governments, often without financial support. Local governments frequently lack the physical, human, or social capital needed to fulfill the mandates. The consequent rise of local taxes, more regressive than federal income taxes, puts an extra burden on low-income populations. However, one positive result has been more capacity-building for governance at the local level. Also, some governments and citizen groups have responded to the pressures, engaging in collaborative agreements to share resources with other governments or citizen groups. This response is consistent with economic development policies recommended by rural experts (Arnold and Dewees 1997; Giltmier 1996; Kilkenny 2008). Watershed collaborations, because they create local learning milieus which foster local activism and networking, create potential for a synergy between local development and watershed protection (Pearce and Markandya 1989). Such synergy could, but would not necessarily, foster sustainable development. If local government development efforts increased use of local inputs, that alone would improve sustainability, both by raising local incomes and by reducing the area’s carbon footprint. However, government officials and community members may subscribe to the paradigm of resource exploitation rather than sustainable use of resources. Part of the local economy may be dependent on jobs, suppliers,
and customers who are organized in unsustainable methods of production (Furze 1992). State governments have demonstrated fear of losing tax revenues due to environmental enforcement (Konisky 2007). Local governments are more vulnerable than state governments to business pressures, especially if they lack amenities that give them a competitive edge, and are competing with similar communities (Irwin et al. 2007). The influence of a state development agency or environmental activists might help such areas avoid deleterious competition.
