ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the importance of institutional arrangements in sustainable natural resource management, and how they may influence, and contribute to, the rural development process. It investigates how the concept of sustainability and sustainable rural development is differently understood and appropriated by different types of actors. The chapter provides a brief portrait of the agricultural and rural specificities of the study area context and describes its main socio-economic characteristics. It introduces the Zonal Plan and analyses the main characteristics and dynamics of the Zonal Plan institutional arrangements. The chapter provides a discussion of different understandings of sustainability and sustainable rural development. Preventing changes in regional farming systems and totally dependent on CAP subsidies, the strategy to stimulate agricultural economic activity has turned such holdings into an obstacle to rural development. To the farmers enrolled in the Zonal Plan, sustainable rural development means economic sustainability.
