Sustainable livelihoods approaches in practice: potentials and constraints

Review of using SL approaches in programme design, monitoring and evaluation

What is the track record of Sustainable Livelihoods (SL) approaches in project and programme design? What is the interface between SL and other important development approaches? This paper, prepared for a SIDA poverty workshop, reviews the experience of using SL approaches in project and programme design, and in monitoring and evaluation. It goes on to assess the potential complementarity between SL and other development approaches: namely, rights-based approaches and the new country-level development strategies which aim to integrate poverty and environment into the ‘new architecture of aid’.

The authors find that in order for SL to achieve it’s potential, certain preconditions are necessary, including:

for project and programme design: mechanisms for cross-sectoral collaboration; training facilities; and a willingness to bear the extra costs of process-orientation
for monitoring and evaluation: a process for establishing indicators in collaboration with stakeholders; openness to a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods; and methods for monitoring ‘process’ in several dimensions.

The authors also find common themes between SL, rights-based and new country-level strategies. These include a concern with the limited access to resources of some citizen groups, and an emphasis on participation and ownership across all social sectors. Further integration of these approaches may imply:

more explicit consideration in SL approaches of issues of politics and power
using SL approaches more thoroughly as principles to reinforce national development strategies, and as an analytic tool to focus them appropriately on the poor.

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Sustainable livelihoods approaches in practice: potentials and constraints