Introduction

In the 1990s the international community of UN Member States, using unparalleled organizational, financial and human resources and with considerable support from international development research institutions, created an unprecedented framework for sustainable development and thus for sustainable agricultural and rural development. This alone signifies a major advance in the search for an international consensus on development policy. Furthermore, remarkable conceptual work was done to give structure to the analysis of local, national and regional problems, to problem-solving approaches and to policy recommendations. This framework has henceforth formed a comprehensive construct for the perception of the global problems that have accumulated over the years with regard to food security, the improvement of rural incomes and the stabilization of natural resources. It also forms a normative basis for individual national and joint efforts to cope with precisely these three tasks, which have, of course, been the global guide for sustainable agricultural and rural development since UNCED ’92.