Putting a livelihood perspective into practice: systemic approach to rural development

These days, development practitioners are able to draw on a number of analytical frameworks to assist in the design and implementation of poverty reduction programmes. In fact, it has become a bit of a challenge to draw on all the material available in order to pinpoint key issues that realise impact on the ground. Taking this into account, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) has now brought out a manual on the Systematic Approach to Rural Development (SARD) that combines diverse methods of poverty analysis and project design to assist practitioners in their work.

SARD integrates the Sustainable Livelihood Approach (SLA) and Agrarian System Analysis (ASA) to look at people and their livelihoods in a broad perspective, focus on the complex and varied realities of poverty in rural areas and allow for more holistic analysis and programming of pro-poor development interventions. Other participatory tools that assist in collecting and analysing data, such as gender analysis, power relations analysis, stakeholder analysis and an analysis of access to and use of services are also integrated to better understand livelihood patterns and relations between stakeholders in a rural setting.

SARD focuses its analysis at three levels, on:

• household livelihoods
• households and their relationships with other stakeholders
• local landscapes and how their characteristics relate to local history
  

The approach can be adapted for use at different stages of project cycle management (formulation,
monitoring, assessment, re-orientation) and can also assist in strategy and programme
development. Its steps and duration can likewise be tailored to suit particular purposes and situations.

The manual describes how to apply the methodology in practice through a step by step process.
Information sheets provide additional insights into SARD tools while links and references point to further readings. So far, SARD has been used by SDC in Bangladesh and Tanzania and is currently being used by Intercooperation and SDC in Pakistan. This is SDC’s third revision of SARD.