Today’s most severe problem is the gap between three pillars of sustainability; nature, society and the economy, are continuously widening, and the contradictions within these three sub-systems are also becoming more and more evident, thus none of these three pillars can be considered stable at its own. The intelligent response to this present situation would be the harmonization of nature, society and the economy. BS (Four Years) Rural Development is a multidisciplinary program that focuses on certain research problems and subjects require approaches, social and environmental dynamics affecting populations, activities and resources of rural areas. In this sense, BS Rural Development is conceived as a process resulting from joined-up actions which aim at producing socio-economic and environmental change within rural areas towards an improvement of the well-being of rural populations. Due to the complex and dynamic nature of rural areas, which is determined by social, economic, soil and climate, and technological factors, BS Rural Development conceives rural development as a process that is permanently evolving, interacting, and hierarchical regarding its results.

OBJECTIVES

BS Rural Development aims at training professionals at master level to be capable of performing their activities in the fields of teaching, academic research and actions of intervention through the acquisition of methods and concepts which allow them to implement projects and carry out planning activities in favour of rural development. In this sense, the objectives of this program are:

1. To analyze and evaluate the design, implementation and management of rural development projects and programs, as well as the consequences of these actions for society.
2. To investigate the implementation of public policies through the analysis and evaluation of rural development actions implemented at regional and local level.
3. To analyze the impacts and implications of contemporary public policies based on the participation and decentralization of rural populations.
4. To connect the insights on rural development with general socio-economic, political and cultural development. These objectives are intended to integrate rural development in a wider view on the concept of social development.