New Zealand Aid Tools Sectors, Themes and Issues 

Sustainable Livelihoods Approach

Annex 5: Participatory Methods for Livelihoods Analysis



Livelihood outcomes


  • Well-being ranking of social groups, communities or populations in regions (at different moments in recent history)
  • Social mapping
  • Cause-effect diagrams
  • Analysis of historical aerial photographs and remote sensing images and data, with a particular focus on environmental change

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Livelihood strategies


  • Ranking of income sources
  • Mapping of migration patterns
  • Inventory and ranking of income and expenditure
  • Seasonal calendars of production, employment and income

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Policies, institutions and processes


  • Venn diagrams
  • Actor network analysis and ‘power network diagrams’
  • Cause-effect and flow diagrams
  • Market inventories and commodity price tracking
  • Narratives or institutional histories from key informants (including on traditional rules, tenure and markets)

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Livelihood assets


  • Livelihood diagrams
  • Asset surveys and resource mapping, including soil and vegetation surveys and inventories of the quality of housing stock, water supply and sanitation systems
  • Seasonal calendars of asset availability and quality
  • Social network and Venn diagrams

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Vulnerability context


  • Study of meteorological and demographic data
  • Research in historical archives with a particular focus on political context and market fluctuations

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