What are livelihoods approaches?

Livelihoods approaches are a way of thinking about the objectives, scope and priorities for development. They place people and their priorities at the centre of development. They focus poverty reduction interventions on empowering the poor to build on their own opportunities, supporting their access to assets, and developing an enabling policy and institutional environment.

Core to livelihoods approaches are a set of principles that underpin best practice in any development intervention:

• People-centred
• Responsive and participatory
• Multi-level
• Conducted in partnership
• Sustainable
• Dynamic

In addition to these principles, livelihoods approaches are based on a conceptual framework to aid analysis of the factors affecting peoples’ livelihoods, including:

• the priorities that people define as their desired livelihood outcomes
• their access to social, human, physical, financial and natural capital or assets, and their ability to put these to productive use
• the different strategies they adopt (and how they use their assets) in pursuit of their priorities
• the policies, institutions and processes that shape their access to assets and opportunities
• the context in which they live, and factors affecting vulnerability to shocks and stresses.

The ‘Sustainable Livelihoods Approach’ (SLA) concept and framework adopted by DFID in the late 1990s (building on work by IDS, IISD, Oxfam and others) have been adapted by different organisations to suit a variety of contexts, issues, priorities and applications. This introduction section draws heavily on DFID SLA materials. Other resources in this Eldis Livelihoods Dossier cover a wider range of more recent applications and adaptations of that thinking - brought together under the umbrella term of ‘livelihoods approaches’.