Sustainable Livelihoods Approach
Why use the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach?
NZAID’s Growth and Livelihoods Policy recognises the relevance of the sustainable livelihoods approach, especially its principles, to all of NZAID’s assistance in the economic development and livelihoods-related field.
The sustainable livelihoods approach provides a framework to help understand the main factors that affect poor people’s livelihoods, and the relationships between these factors, and this in turn facilitates the planning and implementation of more effective development interventions. By centring our thinking around people rather than the technical inputs development might deliver to them the chances of achieving sustainable impacts on poverty reduction are significantly improved.
The sustainable livelihood approach:
- Identifies existing assets and strategies available to poor women and men and uses these as a starting point;
- Helps keep the focus on poor people and their varied livelihood assets, strategies and outcomes (rather than resources and activities);
- Recognises differences based on sex, gender, age, ethnicity, power and poverty status;
- Builds on strengths as a means to addressing needs and constraints;
- Makes explicit the links between policy and institutional issues, and micro level realities; and
- Helps in understanding how individual, possibly sector-specific, development programmes1 and projects fit into the wider livelihoods agenda and objectives.
SL analysis (the application of the SL approach) is likely to identify a number of different options for supporting livelihoods but development programmes and projects should not attempt to tackle all aspects of livelihoods. The emphasis should be on identifying and negotiating, together with partners and primary stakeholders, the ‘best bet’ entry points that will have a significant impact on the livelihoods of the poor. The SL approach helps to identify key "pressure points", but other more specific methods are required to determine which to tackle first, and how.
A key lesson from SL analysis is that holistic analysis is important but that does not imply that multi-sectoral and multi-level interventions are necessarily appropriate. Interventions might be best focussed on addressing one or two pressure points/priorities in one sector and at one level. A helpful analogy is the ‘acupuncture approach’: an acupuncturist uses a holistic diagnosis of the patient, but the treatment is focussed and specific.
1 Not to be confused with NZAID regional, country or thematic programmes. See Tools Glossary.