Sustainable livelihoods enhancement and diversification: a manual for practitioners

The aim of this manual is to provide development practitioners with an introduction to the Sustainable Livelihoods Enhancement and Diversification (SLED) process as well as guidance for practitioners facilitating that process.

The majority of the efforts to support livelihood enhancement and diversification have tended to be supply-driven and focused on single, “blueprint” solutions.
Such solutions are not built on an understanding of the underlying factors helping or inhibiting livelihood diversification, and often fail to appreciate the obstacles faced by the poor in trying to enhance and diversify their livelihoods.

The SLED approach has been developed by Integrated Marine Management Ltd (IMM) through building on the lessons of past livelihoods research projects as well as worldwide experience in livelihood improvement and participatory development practice. It aims to provide a set of guidelines for development and conservation practitioners whose task it is to assist people in enhancing and diversifying their livelihoods. Under the Coral Reefs and Livelihoods Initiative (CORALI), this approach has been field tested and further developed in very different circumstances and institutional settings, in six sites across South Asia and Indonesia.

SLED can be applied widely wherever natural resources are facing degradation because of unsustainable human use, and it provides a framework within which diverse local contexts and the local complexities of livelihood change can be accommodated. It is designed to help those working to establish effective conservation measures to engage with local resource users and communities in enabling them to deal effectively with the changes in their livelihoods that these measures will cause.

SLED has been developed and piloted in the field using an action research approach, in collaboration with ground-level practitioners across Asia. The SLED approach has therefore been created and tested by the type of stakeholders who will ultimately be instrumental in implementing it, and represents a methodology that is grounded in real-world experience. However, this manual should be seen as a guide and not as a substitute for proper training, experience and skills in community engagement, planning, and livelihood development.