DFID is promoting the Sustainable Livelihoods approach as a means of addressing these targets.

Sustainable Livelihoods Objectives

Guidance Sheets

The Government White Paper

Background to the Debate

Sustainable Livelihoods Objectives

The sustainable livelihoods approach is broad and encompassing. It can, however, be distilled to six core objectives. DFID aims to increase the sustainability of poor people’s livelihoods through promoting:

• improved access to high-quality education, information, technologies and training and better

• nutrition and health;

• a more supportive and cohesive social environment;

• more secure access to, and better management of, natural resources;

• better access to basic and facilitating infrastructure;

• more secure access to financial resources; and

• a policy and institutional environment that supports multiple livelihood strategies and promotes equitable access to competitive markets for all.

Key Concepts

The livelihoods approach is necessarily flexible in application, but this does not mean that its core principles should be compromised. This sheet outlines these principles and explains why they make such an important contribution to the overall value of the approach.

People-centred.

The livelihoods approach puts people at the centre of development. This focus on people is equally important at higher levels (when thinking about the achievement of objectives such as poverty reduction, economic reform or sustainable development) as it is at the micro or community level (where in many cases it is already well entrenched).

People – rather than the resources they use or the governments that serve them – are the priority concern. Adhering to this principle may well translate into providing support to resource management or good governance (for example). But it is the underlying motivation of supporting people’s livelihoods that should determine the shape of the support and provide the basis for evaluating its success.

Holistic

The livelihoods approach attempts to identify the most pressing constraints faced by, and promising opportunities open to, people regardless of where (i.e. in which sector, geographical space or level, from the local through to the international) these occur. It builds upon people’s own definitions of these constraints and opportunities and, where feasible, it then supports people to address/realise them. The livelihoods framework helps to ‘organise’ the various factors which constrain or provide opportunities and to show how these relate to each other. It is not intended to be an exact model of the way the world is, nor does it mean to suggest that stakeholders themselves necessarily adopt a systemic approach to problem solving. Rather, it aspires to provide a way of thinking about livelihoods that is manageable and that helps improve development effectiveness.

Dynamic

Just as people’s livelihoods and the institutions that shape them are highly dynamic, so is this approach. It seeks to understand and learn from change so that it can support positive patterns of change and help mitigate negative patterns. It explicitly recognises the effects on livelihoods of external shocks and more predictable, but not necessarily less damaging, trends. Attempting to capture and build upon such livelihood dynamism significantly increases the scope of livelihood analysis. It calls for ongoing investigation and an effort to uncover the nature of complex, two-way cause and effect relationships and iterative chains of events.

Building on Strengths

An important principle of this approach is that it starts with an analysis of strengths, rather than needs. This does not mean that it places undue focus on the better endowed members of the community. Rather, it implies a recognition of everyone’s inherent potential, whether this derives from their strong social networks, their access to physical resources and infrastructure, their ability to influence core institutions or any other factor that has poverty-reducing potential. In ‘livelihoods focused’ development efforts, a key objective will be to remove the constraints to the realisation of potential. Thus people will be assisted to become more robust, stronger and better able to achieve their own objectives.

Macro-Micro Links

Development activity tends to focus at either the macro or the micro level. The livelihoods approach attempts to bridge this gap, emphasising the importance of macro level policy and institutions to the livelihood options of communities and individuals. It also stresses the need for higher level policy development and planning to be informed by lessons learnt and insights gained at the local level. This will simultaneously give local people a stake in policy and increase overall effectiveness. It is, though, a difficult task to achieve.
.
Sustainability

While it is common to hear and use the short-hand ‘livelihoods approach’ (i.e. omitting ‘sustainable’), the notion of sustainability is key to this approach. It should not be ignored or marginalised.

Guidance Sheets

The Guidance Sheets are one product of a lengthy and still ongoing process of consultation about sustainable livelihoods. The consultation, which commenced in January 1998, has extended to:

•  DFID personnel (both at headquarters and in regional offices)

•  NGO representatives

•  representatives of other bilateral and multilateral donors

•  researchers

•  DFID consultants.

The process of consultation and collaboration has been highly productive. These Guidance Sheets are a genuinely joint product; they try to capture thinking from well beyond DFID itself. However, thus far, DFID’s developing country partners – policy-makers, leaders and clients – have not been adequately involved; their views have been sought only indirectly. These sheets can therefore be thought of as a starting point from which DFID personnel, and others who find the sheets useful, can begin to explore and develop further the new ideas with partner organisations.

The White Paper

This White Paper sets out the Government's policies to achieve the sustainable development of this planet. It is first, and most importantly, about the single greatest challenge which the world faces , eliminating poverty. It is about ensuring that the poorest people in the world benefit as we move towards a new global society. It is about creating partnerships with developing countries and their peoples, on the basis of specific and achievable targets, to bring that about.

Background to the Debate

The background to the livelihoods debate and how the new approaches fit into government and non-government frameworks for supporting and targetting rural development to the poor is discussed in "Approaches to Sustainable Livelihoods for the Rural Poor". This document also deals with conceptual problems that have arisen.

Approaches to Sustainable Livelihoods for the Rural Poor; Carney, D (1999), ODI Poverty Briefing, ODI London