Sustainable Rural Development: Initiatives in Ameliorating Key Drivers of Rural Economy and Associated Challenges in Achieving SDGs in Bangladesh

Abstract

After achieving significant progress in the millennium development era, Bangladesh has also embraced sustainable development goals (SDGs), and to successfully attain these goals, sustainable rural development is inevitable. Hence, the government has taken initiatives to spur rural growth by ameliorating the main drivers of the rural economy. The country has already reached its sixth year of SDG implementation, and it is a decent time to assess the direction in which SDG implementation work regarding rural development is moving because insightful lessons from the assessment help raise the efficacy of efforts over the coming years. Therefore, the Preferred Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocol is proposed to investigate efforts to ameliorate the highest priority areas between 2015 and 2021 and identify challenges that call for further attention. The findings indicate that despite the last six years of public and private efforts that have significantly advanced the rural economy, the following still impedes expected outcomes: complexities in allocation and utilization of development funds, technology backwardness, coordination complexities between public and private stakeholders, lack of capacity in managing and adapting climate-related risks, unethical practice in the health and education sector, social inequalities, low digital literacy, and the dissonance among education, industry, skill, and employment sector. Based on those identified issues, this article provides possible policy and strategy recommendations.