Statement and process: designing 'good' arguments about the rural energy problem in developing countries

In rural areas of developing countries, growing scarcities of traditional energy supplies (for example, wood and other biomass fuels) threaten already precarious living standards. Effective development strategies are hampered by the multiple and sometimes conflicting ways in which rural energy issues have been perceived in the Third World. In this paper, a planning perspective is offered which focuses on the process of argumentation by which planners understand, advance, and act upon rural energy concerns. The basis and implications of two argumentation models—statement and process—are defined and examined within the context of past rural energy-development arguments. A four-point model is offered which allows a judgment of a ‘good’ rural energy planning argument.