Background

The Department for International Development (DFID) of the United Kingdom had commissioned a three year research project on “Improving Policy-Livelihood Relationships in South Asia”, starting from April 2000. The research project is being implemented by a consortium consisting of partner organizations in the UK and in South Asia. The UK partners are led by the University of Leeds and include the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), Marine Resources Assessment Group (MRAG), University of East Anglia and Reading University. The South Asian partners include Development Alternatives (DA) in India, the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS) in Bangladesh, the Lanka Institute for Environment (LIFE) in Sri Lanka and the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Research (ICIMOD) in Nepal.

The project goal is to develop and promote practical policy options to support rural livelihoods through a range of research, development and advocacy activities that will together realize the stated project purpose of developing and promoting policy reform options to improve access to livelihood assets and reduce vulnerability of poor rural people.

The focus of the research project is on natural resource policies and the research will look in detail at three policy areas across four countries:

Different field research programmes have been developed. These build on past longitudinal research in Nepal on community forestry, Bangladesh on water resources management and Himachal Pradesh on forest policy development. Major new field research programmes have been developed on micro-watersheds development in Andhra Pradesh, coastal livelihoods and policies in Bangladesh, and a field appraisal is being undertaken on the impacts of coastal zone policies in Sri Lanka.

The project also has an active knowledge sharing, dissemination, advocacy and outreach programme. The range of project outputs developed include research reports, academic articles, policy briefings, a website, the use of media such as newspapers and popular journals, and the dissemination of findings through regular newsletters, fact sheets, a project issues paper series and in-country workshops hosted by the  South Asia Sustainable Livelihoods Policy Forum (SASLPF).

The Forum meets regularly to review the project’s findings, and establish policy dialogues that are intended to sustain beyond the lifetime of the project. The Forum has been developed and is operated wholly by the South Asian Partners. 

					Local Resource Base
					Entitlements/Access
					Natural
External Institutional Context (Societal, policy, legal, institutional and economic		Community/ Local Institutional Context (Institutional, economic and socio-political
				Social					Physical
				Financial					Human
Vulnerability Context ●  Market failure ● Socio-political structures ● Climate change ● Population growth ● Ill health ● Natural disasters ● Institutional weakness					Livelihood Activities
Wider Natural Context ●  natural resources base ●  environment ●  climate					Livelihood Activities ● Farming ● CPR Utilisation ● Labour ● Off farm income entreprise ● Household maintenance activities
					"Income"			Inputs
					cash, goods and services
		Social Payments			"Income" Strategy
							Consumption
					Outcome well being: quality and standard of life

A Model of Sustainable Livelihoods 

Livelihood Approaches

The concept of sustainable livelihoods has been gradually developing over the last decade to a position where it is widely accepted as offering new insights into the dynamics of development and diversity of experiences of poor (and other) people throughout the world.  It is an approach that is flexible and dynamic, and in particular that provides a basis for understanding the relationship between poor communities, their local environment and external socio-economic, environmental and institutional forces.  Carney (1998) presented a definition of livelihoods that is widely accepted:
 

“A livelihood comprises the capabilities, assets (including both material and social resources) and activities required for a means of living.  A livelihood is sustainable when it can cope with and recover from stresses and shocks and maintain or enhance its capabilities and assets both now and in the future, while not undermining the natural resource base” (Carney 1998, page-4).

Linkage to Poverty

Rennie and Singh (1996) argue that “predominantly the poor of the world depend directly on natural resources, through cultivation, herding, collecting or hunting for their livelihoods.  Therefore, for the livelihoods to be sustainable, the natural resources must be sustained” (page 9).  This is certainly true where, as is the case for many rural communities, access to natural resources is vital to many rural activities that are key parts of the livelihoods of the poor.  A few points can illustrate how this approach helps in the development of activities that focus on the relationship between poverty policy development and sustainable livelihoods.

The relationship between the different elements of livelihoods dynamics identified here are shown in Figure 1.

These basic concepts could be traced through the flows shown in
Figure 1.  The figure is based around a core sub-model that represents the livelihood dynamics of a household (though it could also be used to represent the livelihood for larger social grouping that share fundamental similarities).

The sub-model starts with the entitlements and access they possess to the resource base in their locality (with all types of resources, natural and human, material and non-material, taken into account).  These in turn define the capital, or livelihood assets, available to the household in their livelihoods are represented by in pentagon : financial, social, natural, physical and human.  Taken together, these capital assets represent the capabilities and assets, the “factors of production” that the household can deploy.  A key aspect of a livelihoods approach is to understand how these assets change over time, and in particular how increases or reductions in them affect the livelihoods choices available to the household.

Taken together, these livelihood assets represent a potential, a set of possibilities for the household to secure a livelihood.  But they do not automatically define that livelihood, for the extent to which their potential is realized, will depend on decisions on what assets to utilise when; decision that together constitute the livelihood strategy of the household.  There are always difficult choices to be made here: for example, what use of the assets will provide the best returns?  What risks are involved in particular decisions?  Which assets should be held in reserve for the future?  What should be invested to increase future assets?

The choices made in the strategy will in turn define the livelihood activities of the household: which activities are undertaken whom and when.

These activities produce a flow of income:  the range of cash, goods and services that are the reward from, and the rational for, undertaking the activities chosen.

This income is in turn allotted through a second key set of decisions: the income strategy.  The income can be allocated to saving or investments that enhance the value of the assets, to pay for inputs that go into production, to repaying loans or social payments (taxes etc) or, finally, to consumption that is part of the outcome – that is, the total set of goods and services that constitute the material fabric of people’s lives.  q 

For More Information: 

Stockholm Environment Institute

University of York, York, YO10 5YW, UK

Tel/Fax: Int. + (0) 1904 432897

Email: seiy@york.ac.uk

Website: www.york.ac.uk/inst/sei/prp

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