Sustainable livelihoods guidance sheets: section 7

This is the seventh and final part of the guidance sheets on sustainable livelihoods (SL).  It looks at SL approaches in practice. This is done through five case studies on a variety of sectors and issues.

• section 7.1 focuses on drought and water security. This case study documents how the British Geological Survey has begun to move towards a more holistic approach to drought and its water security programmes, rather than just focusing on water resource implications. This shift from resource to people has provided deeper insights into the nature of water insecurity across seasons, between good and bad years, between different agro-ecological zones and between households

• section 7.2 looks at building roads with a poverty focus in an innovative project aiming to rehabilitate feeder roads. This is based in an area of Mozambique suffering the consequences of long-term conflict. This example shows how, with flexible management and on-going analysis, a Sustainable Livelihoods Approach can be adopted while a project is being implemented. In this case, a SL perspective at review stage resulted in making the project sustainable and more poverty focused

• section 7.3 is on the Kipepeo Project, in which SL concepts were used to assess the impact on livelihoods of a wildlife enterprise project in East Africa. In ‘conservation and development’ projects, local development is usually assessed in the narrow terms cash generation, increased production or job creation. Wider social issues and livelihoods concerns are often ignored. This case study evaluates the project with a greater emphasis on people’s livelihood strategies and priorities; and how impacts vary according to stakeholder group

• section 7.4 examines the design of the Andhra Pradesh Rural Livelihoods Project on watershed management. The case study shows how a livelihoods centred design does not confine itself to land-based development issues. In adopting a livelihoods perspective, the project positively encourages the flexibility required for local people to prioritise interventions. Furthermore, the design positively builds upon, and strengthens, existing self-help initiatives, such as a State-wide women’s self-help movement

• section 7.5 focuses on the decentralisation of livelihoods services in the eastern regions of Indonesia. Although the project design predates the emergence of DFID’s Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA), it does touch on two fundamental elements of the approach: the value of focusing on people rather than on resources, and the critical importance of ensuring that policies are based on sound understanding of ground-level realities.