Using the sustainable livelihoods framework to understand agro-pastoralist livelihoods in NW Yunnan

What factors frame the relationship between agriculture and livestock in NW Yunnan? How can the livelihoods approach help design interventions in support of agro-pastoralists? This paper presents an analysis of the livelihoods of agro-pastoralists at a project site of the Center for Biodiversity and Indigenous Knowledge (CBIK).

The project aims to enhance the capacity of relevant stakeholders to develop technical and institutional interventions to enhance the sustainability of agro-pastoralists’ livelihoods.

The analysis is based on fieldwork conducted in the region before the onset of the project, and finds that:

• interactions between agriculture and livestock are important determinants of agro-pastoralist livelihoods; in particular the need to farm as well as herd has implications for labour allocation, and for the management of natural fodder resources
• productivity in animal husbandry does not equal producing livestock for sale. Local ways of categorising livestock assets, and their value in different exchange processes, are complex, and reflect a diversity of livelihood arrangements.
  

• a better understanding of flows of assets, as well as attributes vested in different assets, can help explain a household’s production objectives and constraints, and hence point to a greater variety of possible interventions
• participatory surveys of this kind can identify potential solutions which can be directly tested through on-farm experiments, and can be based on local strengths.