**7. Conclusion**

Rural areas are facing problems of endemic poverty and hunger across the globe. Especially, in developing countries, rural economies are largely dependent on agriculture. A significant proportion of the population in these countries earn their livelihood from agriculture. Small landholdings, degrading soil and water quality, declining productivity, and low profits are making agriculture an unattractive business in these areas. Consequently, the world is facing challenges to achieve sustainable development in rural areas. Three pillars of sustainable rural development; economic, social, and environmental development depend to large extent on solving resource constraints of the rural population. Access to financial resources is one of the significant resource constraints for rural people. Microcredit which emerged from Bangladesh has the potential to ease the financial constraints of rural people. Microcredit offers small loans to poor people who have less or no collateral and are often ignored by the conventional banking system. Positive impacts of microcredit on poverty alleviation, employment generation, women empowerment, curbing rural outmigration, food security, better health and education, climate change adaptation, and green entrepreneurship are extensively documented in the literature. Hence, microcredit can be used as a tool to achieve sustainable rural development through the economic, social, and environmental development of these areas.

*Role of Microcredit in Sustainable Rural Development DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.102588*
