| Agriculture, fisheries, horticulture and forestry represent the basis for human nutrition. At the same time, they also provide subsistence and income for a large part of the global population, especially in less industrialized countries. Accordingly, natural resource management plays a central role in the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations. The first of the eight millennium goals aims to reduce proportion of absolute poverty and malnutrition by half from 1990 to 2015. According to the statistics of the Wordbank, , in 2005 around 1.4 billion people (one in four) were affected by absolute poverty, having less than $ 1.25 per day. FAO states that about 15% of the world's population, i.e. more than 870 million people, were malnourished in 2004-06, and the trend is increasing. (FAO 2009). |  Source: Wikimedia Commons map based on UNWFP 2009 Hunger Map |
Institutional Resource Economics deals with the use of natural resources and particularly analyses the systems of rules and the relationships of actors who influence the allocation of resources. The rules of a society and the economic use of natural resources they are expected to bring about have a crucially affect nutrition and income through farming practices. For research in the context of less industrialized agrarian-oriented countries, multiple aspects of social, economic, and political exclusion and the resulting poverty, malnutrition and conflicts play a crucial role.
In the Division of Resource Economics this problem dimension is addressed in the following research project:
- RSP - Making Rural Services Work for the Poor