Community Livelihoods and

Sustainable Development
Goals
The Sustainable Livelihoods Approach
• The Sustainable Livelihoods framework was focused on rural
development
• The original ideas can be found in Robert Chambers and Gordon
Conway (1991) and Ian Scoones (1998)
• The SLF was supported by DFID and is used by other agencies–
Oxfam, UNDP and the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief (CARE).
Assets
Five types of resources known as assets are
identified
• human capital -- skills, education and health
• social capital -- networks and personal relationships
• natural capital -- land, water, forests, wildlife, etc
• physical capital -- basic infrastructure such as transport, housing,
water, energy and communications
• financial capital -- income, savings and access to loans
Thinking across asset types
Asset Pentagons

• Relative access to different types of capital/assets is graphically captured by

the shape of the asset pentagon.
• (Left): Standard asset pentagon implying equal access to five capitals
• (Right): limited access to financial, natural and human capital; expanding
physical and social capital (perhaps due to investment in public goods)
• Assets can be combined in a variety of ways... Key issues for SLF include:
• Sequencing: Are some combinations of assets better suited for escaping
poverty than others?
• Substitution: Can one type of capital be replaced with another? For
example, can human capital (more education) compensate for lack of
financial capital in a given context?
• Clustering: If you have lots of one type of asset do you need others?
Livelihood Strategies

These include:
• ex-ante risk reduction strategies; and
• ex-post survival and coping strategies

Positive livelihood activities (leading to greater security and more assets/wealth):

• Livelihood intensification – expansion or strengthening of existing strategies
• Livelihood diversification – adoption of new more diverse strategies

Negative livelihood activities (leading to greater vulnerability and loss of assets):

• Migration to more secure locations
• Running down assets – selling land, killing cattle for food
 Livelihoods and Vulnerability
Livelihood activities are subject to risk factors (collectively known as the vulnerability context) and
existing structures, institutions and policies

VULNERABILITY CONTEXT
• shocks which can destroy assets altogether, e.g. floods, civil conflict, illness or death in the family,
collapse in the terms of trade
• trends which are more predictable and influence the rate of return on chosen livelihood activities,
e.g. Demographic, economic, technological, political
• seasonality which involves annual cycles and changes in prices, production, employment
opportunities and so on.

POLICY AND INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT

• Livelihoods are influenced by overarching structures and processes including government and civil
society, laws and rights, cultural norms and democracy and participation (or lack thereof).
• Role of policy is to reduce poverty (and vulnerability) by helping the poor to build up and consolidate
their assets.
 What are Sustainable Livelihoods?
Classic definition:
“a livelihood comprises the capabilities, assets (stores, resources, claims and access) and
activities required for a means of living: a livelihood is sustainable which can cope with and
recover from stress and shocks, maintain or enhance its capabilities and assets, and provide
sustainable livelihood opportunities for the next generation; and which contributes net
benefits to other livelihoods at the local and global levels and in the short and long term”
(Chambers and Conway, 1991, p. 6)

Extremely deep and thoughtful definition that includes multiple concepts

• tangible assets broadly construed as “resources and stores” – they’re not restricted to specific
types of asset
• power structures and inequalities explicitly included – there is an emphasis on intangibles
assets in terms of “claims and access”; and explicit recognition of future generations
• Stresses capacity to recover from AND avoid a range of negative phenomena
• Emphasis on macro and micro factors and short and long term factors.
 Bringing together concepts
Standard definition is adapted from Chambers et al:
“A livelihood comprises the capabilities, assets (including both material and social
resources) and activities required for a means of living. A livelihood is sustainable
when it can cope with and recover from stresses and shocks and maintain or
enhance its capabilities and assets both now and in the future, while not
undermining the natural resource base.”
Source #1: DFID, 1999-2001 SL Guidance Sheets.
Source#2: Diana Carney, 1998 Sustainable Rural Livelihoods, DFID: London, p. 4

Lost in translation?
• Primary emphasis is now squarely on assets and sustainability
• Reference to power structures and inequalities (“access and claims”) drops out and
is replaced with a new emphasis on “social resources” (meaning social capital)
• Framework becomes more exclusive insofar as it goes on to identify the assets that
matter in advance.
• Fair to say that it retains the emphasis on macro, micro and policy factors
 Across disciplines
The contrast with the framework that actually developed and the original background paper –
Chambers (development) and Conway (science)– becomes even more pronounced if we consider some
of the passages that immediately precede the original definition of SL.
Chambers and Conway refer to SL as an “integrated concept” and point to three “fundamentals” :
capabilities, equity and sustainability. The first thing they say in the section of their paper clarifying the
concept of SL is:
“Capabilities, equity and sustainability combine in the concept of sustainable livelihoods. A
livelihood in its simplest sense is a means of gaining a living. Capabilities are both an end and means
of livelihood: A livelihood provides the support for the enhancement and protection of capabilities
(an end) ; and capabilities (a means) enable a livelihood to be gained. Equity is both an end and a
means: any minimum definition of equity must include adequate and decent livelihoods.
Sustainability, too, is both end and means: sustainable stewardship of resources is a value (or end)
in itself; and it provides conditions (a means) for livelihoods to be sustained for future generations.”
(Chambers and Conway, 1991, p. 5)
• Notice the emphasis on equity and “ends” as well as means.
• Have to wait for Development As Freedom to get the same sort of “rounded” conceptualisations.
• Chambers and Conway also warn against the limitations of conventional thinking which is “resistant to
change” (production, employment and poverty line thinking)
Scoones’ (1998) SLF

Question: From the discussion so far what do you think the key
strengths and weaknesses of the SLF are?
 Strengths of SLF
• SLF helps identify multiple entry points for analysing livelihoods ranging from
the traditional emphasis on natural resources (land, water, forests, livestock)
to emerging issues such as biodiversity and ethical trade
• Goes beyond income by emphasising assets

• Does not compromise on the environment

• It is people centred, participatory and responsive – it listens to the poor and

vulnerable

• Recognises that people’s livelihoods are diverse

 Criticisms of SLF
• While it is flexible and provides multiple entry points, SLF does not provide any
firm guidance on where to start.
• Exclusively concerned with helping the poor to help themselves: Hard to
imagine the poor recovering from some external shocks without something
more – e.g. natural and man-made disasters that completely destroy asset base.
SLF is over optimistic regarding the possibility of substituting one asset for
another

• In some contexts certain assets may be non-tradable. In other circumstances,

there may be clear limits to substitution possibilities.

• Where is it possible to substitute, trading one asset for another might be costly:
for example, exchanging financial capital for human capital (if education and
health care systems are poor).
Participation and Development
Robert Chambers
• (PRA) has been defined as “a growing family of approaches and methods to enable
local people to share, enhance and analyse their knowledge of life and conditions,
to plan and to act” (Chambers, 1994).
• “…PRA is intended to enable local people to conduct their own analysis, and often
to plan and take action” (Chambers, 1994).

Deeply contested definitions

• Participatory research is politically contentious – originally intended to empower
the poor; however, far more emphasis is placed on power relations in the South.
• The World Bank is sometimes criticised for co-opting and mainstreaming
participatory methods – The Bank’s emphasis on identifying beneficiaries, seeking
consensus through sharing information, and mobilising “their” resources to make
projects more efficient;
• NGOs focused on raising self awareness and agency.
Deliberative democracy
In political science and philosophy there is an allied literature on deliberative democracy
that overlaps with participatory research methods

The Contribution of Deliberation

In addition to gathering information, participatory approaches

provide a mechanism for public discussion and deliberation,
which allows participants to:
• exchange views and information
• influence proceedings by “offering reasons others can accept”
• learn from the experiences of other people and revise their
opinions accordingly;
• pool their capacity to analyse the relative merits of different
arguments and options; and
• move towards a consensus grounded in the common good.
Democracy and Self-Reporting
• The growing importance of self-reporting instruments has important
consequences for the democratisation of development.
• This emphasis on democratisation resonates strongly with the
centrality of justice, a core tenet in the capability approach.
• The considerable potential for an overlap between subjective well-
being and capabilities has become a subject of considerable interest
(Binder, 2014)
The Multilateral system
• Development as a linear system in the image of high income western
countries
• Multilateral system as an institutionalisation of ‘the order of things’
• International Financial Institutions as ‘politically neutral’ but having a
political economy
• The impact of hegemony on knowledge and expertise
Moving from the Washington Consensus to
the Millennium Development Goals
• In September 2000, an announcement of
international development goals-UN Millennium
Declaration- to be achieved by 2015
• ‘a framework for achieving development success’
• To be based on a greater aid budget-UN Monterrey
Consensus
The political economy of the MDGs
• In the wake of a trail of development failures-crises of the 1990s and
the inability of multilateral institutions to provide remedies
• The creation of a platform of public-private partnerships to permit
corporate entry into development policies and agendas
• The goals do not permit comparisons across countries as the methods
of measurement differ
Is there a clear terminology and set of
outcomes?
• ‘sustainable access to safe drinking water’-bottled water being used
as a measure!
• ‘gender parity’ and ‘gender equality’ cannot be measured by number
of boys and girls enrolled in school
• Metrics and corporatist tendencies-more about development
agencies than about the process of development
Likelihood of achieving MDGs
• The rate of growth needed to achieve a halving of poverty in SSA has
only been achieved by 5 countries in the preceding 15 years
• 86 of 155 countries at risk of not achieving the goal of universal
primary education
• Goal achievement linked to accurate estimation of ‘financing gaps’
Financing and Achieving Goals
• A need to double/triple the international aid budget to achieve the
goals
• The administrative capacity of countries to absorb the aid flows for
each goal
• The ability of aid to achieve reductions in poverty as compared to
reductions in poverty consequent on increased economic growth
The relationship between aid and improved
development outcomes
• The correlations between expenditure and development outcomes is
poor
• The understanding of how social sector outcomes improve is linked
through intergenerational effects-so might not occur in a fifteen year
period
• The goal for gender parity presumes similar demand and supply
features for boys’ and girls’ education-which might not be the case
Mortality reductions
• Child mortality reductions do not occur suddenly-drops are difficult to
achieve
• The focus is on lost cost-high impact interventions-oral rehydration
• Countries with very different public health budgets proportional to
national expenditure have similar child mortality rates
Off-track and on-track countries
• Investing in countries that are furthest away from the goals
• Difficulty in establishing benchmarks for allocating funds
• Identifying feasible goals for each country –a bottom up approach
rather than a top down approach
• The Paris declaration –and donor harmonisation was still about
funders rather than countries
Poor measure of development processes
• The extent of inequality due to neoliberal processes-that look only at
market outcomes
• No room for redistribution of assets or resources
• Partnership is between agencies and governments, not communities
and comparing poverty and deprivation in northern and southern
countries-social exclusion/adverse incorporation
Gaps in the objectives
• Little focus on processes-relationship between education and health,
child labour and education, links between local and global
sustainability initiatives
• Subsidies, war and the environment-no commentary on the northern
engagement and benefits
• No attention to the big structural shifts-urbanisation, globalisation
MDGs and new global currents
• The opening up of social service provision as a new seam of market
opportunities-private health and education-new philanthropies
• The globalisation of the late 20th century to be replaced by more
plural forms of capitalisms
• Nations linked through transparent rules-WTO and new discussions
on agriculture, new forms of aid-China-Africa trade
What would we gain?

• Realising the link between global poverty concerns and local concerns with a
concerted focus on resources through attention to accountability at local,
national and international levels.

• The building of institutional capacity, and the furtherance of competition within

these institutions.

• To go beyond the statistic of ‘a dollar a day’ and construct measures that

incorporate local values and knowledge in measuring endowments and
capabilities.
Alternative Policy Postulates
• National specificity and multiple routes to modernit(ies)
• The political dominance of the West/ global North in setting out
development (enlightenment and modernity) to be replaced by
Southern discourses
• The importance of indigenous approaches to development that
conflict with national and international
•
Readings
Chambers, R., 1995. Poverty and livelihoods: whose reality counts? Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 7, No. 1,
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/095624789500700106
• Fraser, E., A. Dougill, K. Hubacek, C. Quinn, J. Sendzimir, and M. Termansen, 2011. Assessing Vulnerability to Climate
Change in Dryland Livelihood Systems: Conceptual Challenges and Interdisciplinary Solutions, Special Issue, Ecology and
Society, https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/issues/view.php?sf=52
• Agarwal, A., et. al. Livelihoods and Poverty, IPPC report, ch 13.https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WGIIAR5-
Chap13_FINAL.pdf
• Scoones, I., 2009. “Livelihood perspectives and rural development.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 36(1).
• Hall, R., Scoones, I., & Tsikata D. (2017) Plantations, outgrowers and commercial farming in Africa: agricultural
commercialisation and implications for agrarian change, Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol 44, Issue 3, Pages 515-537 |
Published online: 16 Mar 2017.
• World Development Report, 2008. Agriculture for Development,
https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/5990
• Fukuda Parr, S., and B. Mucchala, 2020. The Southern Origins of SDGs: Ideas, Actors, Inspirations, World Development, 126
, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.104706
• Horn, P., and J. Grugel, 2018. The SDGs in middle-income countries: Setting or serving domestic development agendas?
Evidence from Ecuador, World Development, Volume 109, Pages 73-84, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2018.04.005
• Discussion Class
• Waldmueller, J. M., 2015. Agriculture, knowledge and the ‘colonial matrix of power’: approaching sustainabilities from the
Global South, Journal of Global Ethics, 11:3, 294-302. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17449626.2015.1084523
• Spangenberg, Joachim H. "Hot air or comprehensive progress? A critical assessment of the SDGs." Sustainable
Development 25.4 (2017): 311-321.