The 13th OECD Rural Development Conference was held in Cavan, Ireland on 28-30 September 2022 under the theme "Building Sustainable, Resilient and Thriving Rural Places". These are the presentations from the Conference parallel session "Building Stronger Local Partners: Bringing new stakeholders and partners to the table to amplify the rural voice in policies and strategies". For more information visit https://www.oecd.org/rural/rural-development-conference/.

1. OECD 2022.
From JIGSO, A community action programme in the 1990s in Wales,
to the ERP , the European Rural Parliament of the 21st century .
Both a mosaic and an orchestra of rural passion and creative
representation !
What have we learnt about community action ? ?
When citizens and their rural representative organisations are asked
about their priorities and needs, you get the frustrated demand for
better public services, schools, health, social care, affordable
housing, better transport, digital access etc. But they also emphasise
“GOVERNANCE,” sighting a lack of local control over decisions and
finances that would help them, help themselves. They believe
,rightly, that resources are allocated ,often, on a per head basis,
which discriminates against remote and scarcely populated rural
areas. The number of electoral votes also influences decisions, policy
decisions that are tailored for the majority, for densely populated
areas, and that tailor made rural policies , other than agricultural and
environmental, are rare and an afterthought. There is an ongoing
issue of rural versus urban, often based on a lack of understanding
and empathy and silo tower decision making.
We welcome , of course, within the European Union, the
Commission’s Long Term Strategy for Rural Areas and its Action Plan,
including the PACT and the commitment to rural proofing , a one
stop shop for information and an Observatory for specific rural data,
though I would suggest that the Observatory should include rural
stakeholders in determining research priorities, in the interest of
partnership working.

2. But realistically, at a national and regional level, there is a very long
way to go in shifting political attitudes and in stimulating tailor made
answers to suitable delivery of public and private services. The
current legislation by a regional Spanish Government to proactively
intervene through taxation and housing relocation benefits , is an
exception while the Commission’s on going support for LEADER and
“Smart Villages” is another.
CLLD, Community led local development, is a great title and concept
which in some areas is making a difference but it is not universally
accepted. It sometimes lacks proper business participation and also
doesn’t always manage to include all members of a community, and
maintain their participation, despite some honest efforts.
That’s why capacity resourcing of local actors is a long term necessity
and a worthwhile investment.
The better involvement of business, of all sizes is a challenge that
requires radical thinking in terms of capacity – small businesses in
particular find it difficult to participate, although the pandemic has
introduced zoom and teams interaction which can help speed up the
transfer of knowledge and reduce travel costs and time away from
work or caring duties. Proper integration teaches people to talk and
listen and search for common ground around sometimes conflicting
ambitions for modern rural enterprise, leisure, environmental and
cultural activities.
Equally, reaching out beyond the comfort zones of friends and like
minded citizens to include marginalised residents, minorities and
even the “new rural, “ needs intensive, collective action from NGOs
and public representatives, funders and enablers. Otherwise, we
cannot claim to be inclusive and will never be truly sustainable as
communities. The voice of silence has to be heard! It has to be heard

3. and listened to and acted upon so that improvements to people’s
lives is linked tangibly to an interactive process between policy
makers, deliverers and beneficiaries.
It can be embarrassing sometimes to hear a successful rural
entrepreneur claim that he or she succeeded without the wait and
form filling while seeking public or european funding support. This
has to be addressed even though it is a repeated request, for
simplification.!
However, the most fundamental on going challenge , is to activate
and facilitate local community action and to create a better
partnership framework of accountability between elected
democratic institutions and those campaigning, creating and
delivering ideas and solutions through processes of participative
democracy.
Some twenty years ago I was privileged in Wales to jointly sign a
Partnership Agreement with the Welsh Government, on behalf of the
Voluntary Sector. This agreement established a joint pact on work
arrangements to be overseen by a statutory Partnership Council
consisting of Assembly elected members and groupings of different
Voluntary Organisations. This partnership is still effective today and
is embedded in the Constitution of the Welsh Parliament. Similar
arrangements are in place in several other European Countries. They
provide a transparent exchange of views and build trust between
politicians and voluntary , employee and business representatives.
They importantly, also send a signal for the need to deliver
partnership working at local levels on a sustainable basis .
National or international partnership agreements are worthless
unless they are reciprocated and can deliver better at a local level.

4. For that to be enduring, the voluntary sector needs to have a strong,
united structure from the small grass roots organisations through to
national and international organisations, such as ERCA, ELARD and
PREPARE, with effective reporting and, importantly, with a strong
measure of loyalty for when the going gets tough.
Thankfully, Rural Europe, not just within the EU, does have a
developing representative structure, headed by the European Rural
Parliament. The 5th ERP was held recently in Kielce, Poland with
some 350 delegates from 39 European states and regions. This
Gathering sought to corale the structured views, concerns and
objectives of rural parliaments from within member countries and
regions and create a declaration, an action plan and a manifesto of
constructive proposals to brief and seek adoption by governments at
all levels. This “ better together,” architecture is a remarkable
platform of sincere aspirations and shared expertise and knowledge
and this time nearly a third of the attendees were young people.This
is how to strengthen the rural voice so that “ all Europe shall live!”.
I mentioned that my paper’s title today was ,”From Jigso to the ERP
,” where the ERP was at one point of the triangle and JIGSO was a
project that I chaired in Wales some 30 years ago to enable villages
and small communities to come together to identify through
appraisals, their priorities, and for governmental bodies to sign up to
channel resources towards those community identified priorities.
The idea was first introduced by ACRE in England and included
academic researchers to process and help analyse the
questionnaires. In its first 5 years 179 village appraisals were
undertaken, and many of you will be aware of similar parallel
methods for galvanising community action.

5. However, in practice,there is ,still , a real difference between
statutory accountability and delegated responsibility. If we are to
create a real partnership between public service and voluntary and
business then there has to be a new look at accountability and
shared responsibilities. Consultation with stakeholders has improved
greatly though there is still some balancing to be done between the
collective views of civil society organisations, lobby groups and
citizen panels. This was one of the challenges of the recent
Conference on the future of Europe.
But because of “statutory accountability,” decisions are protected
by politicians leaving stakeholders and the public frustrated. True
partnership is not based, on the one hand, the holder of tax payer
purse strings , and on the other, citizens and NGOs delivering within
their limited resources alongside public and private contractors.
Policies have to be fully co created and fully co delivered, based on
mutual trust and respect. The proviso is that there has to be an
equitable balance of resources and recognition of each other’s
expertise and assets. My colleague in ERCA ,Ben Van Essen is seeking
to develop principles of governance for village pacts in the
Netherlands as a contribution to the European Commission’s PACT.
For example, in rural/urban partnerships of territorial space based
decision making, you have to ensure that the weaker rural partner
has the resource capacity to work equally in any partnership, or risk
being steam rolled and fatigued into being the bridesmaid in an
unsustainable relationship. We are short of pilot studies and
platforms of good practice.
So what have we learnt, from existing community action ?
1 – a sense of community doesn’t belong to every one.

6. 2- sometimes it takes an emergency/ loss of public service or even
private business to galvanise people into community action.
3- that an emergency call to arms has to be successful and for that
to happen, you need strong leadership , an inclusive leadership, full
buy in from local and regional authorities and independent sources
of funding ,such as Foundations, the Lottery and crowd funding,
alongside publically funded , continued facilitators.
4- piloting to learn from success and failure is valuable and needs
investment.
5- community enablers funded by long term public grants act as
catalysts and protectors of governance but must not dominate the
evolving confidence of local communities.
6- Young people have not been fully and properly encouraged to
participate and need some element of positive intervention such as
ensuring that at least a third of community representatives are
young people . Proper mentoring across generations should be in
place as was discussed at the last OECD Conference in Seoul in 2019.
7- Social Enterprises and other community action suffers if it does
not have buy in from local and regional elected representatives.
8- more effort is needed to involve all residents in contributing
talents and action.
9- rural areas have key roles to play in environment, renewable
energy and cultural promotion.Turning ordinary cultural and other
assets into the extraordinary and exploiting the new digital
revolution as it arrives, is the key to revitalizing many rural areas.
This is the real “smart.”

7. 10- New Rural has to be plural. The increasing attractiveness of peri-
urban rural brings potential added expertise to be harnessed but it
also needs proper conflict resolution processes based on shared
learning to ensure harmony.
At a pan European level, we are learning that different solutions are
required between the peri-urban and the remote and that following
the pandemic and energy crises, there are some signs of faster
outward movement of people. This provides new opportunities for
rural areas but also potential conflict when “farming smells ,” !
That is why I believe we need a new Charter of Rural/Urban Rights
and Responsibilities which educates and informs all citizens across
the generations, about how to understand and respect the
interdependency of rural and urban people and the fragility of the
environment which provides not only their food and leisure but also
their very future existence.
Tom Jones.
President, ERCA. European Rural Community Alliance.