The policy, institutions and processes (PIP) dimension of the Sustainable Livelihoods (SL) framework comprises the social and institutional context within which rural individuals and families construct and adapt their livelihoods. As such it embraces quite a complex range of issues associated with participation, power, authority, governance, laws, policies, public service delivery, social relations (gender, caste, ethnicity), institutions (laws, markets, land tenure arrangements) and organisations (NGOs, government agencies, private sector).

In the SL framework, policy, institutions and processes differ from the vulnerability context in that the latter principally comprises exogenous trends and events (shocks, seasonality, economic trends); while the former comprise social and political aspects which are typically endogenous to the norms and rules of the wider society. Of course this distinction is not watertight, but it is nevertheless useful to make the broad distinction between effects on livelihoods over which people have little or no control (the vulnerability context) from those which are a result of history, politics, decision-making, negotiation, in which local communities can actually or potentially engage and participate.

PIP is important because it determines the degree to which an enabling or facilitating environment for livelihoods is in place, compared to an inhibiting and blocking one. The "processes" part of this dimension refers explicitly to processes of change in policies and institutions, and a considerable amount of contemporary development policy is about such change i.e. intended to lead to motivation, responsiveness, accountability, transparency, participation, even-handedness and so on in the performance of agencies that have the capacity to influence for the better livelihood prospects and choices.

In an earlier incarnation, this dimension of the SL framework was called "transforming structures and processes". This emphasised, in addition to the desirability of institutional and organisation change, the need for development agencies to transform the institutional context of livelihoods. Such a transformation would result in an entirely different approach to the problems and opportunities of the poor compared to what has tended to be the practice in the past, especially on the part of local level government agencies. It would involve such agencies proactively seeking, in consultation with the poor themselves, to widen the opportunities for income generation open to them, reduce administrative barriers, and stimulate activity and enterprise.

The PIP Sub-Group was commissioned to produce material on different aspects of policies and institutions, suitable for a web-based learning environment (webtopics). Many of the papers in this list provide links to other online sources of information in the topic areas that they cover. The draft papers currently available to review are presented as either interactive documents (Web format) or as wordprocessed papers (Word format). The Word formats may help for saving/printing off-line but do not necessarily contain all the linked background papers referred to in the Web versions. All documents will soon be available in both formats.

		Synthesis Paper:
		Unpacking the PIP Box: Word

		PIP Papers :
		Hill Agricultural Research Project (HARP) Nepal - Lessons for the Policy, Institutions and Processes Dimensions of the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach: Web / Word  NEW
		Decentralisation    Web /  Word
		Research, Extension and Farmer Organisations    Web /  Word
		Governance     Word
		Organisational Change    Word
		Linking Micro to Macro by Empowering the Rural Poor    Word
		Livestock Service Delivery - Best Practice    Word
		New Institutional Economics    Web / Word

Two examples of background papers to the PIP Sub-Group's work (produced for FAO) are given below:

		Background Papers :
		Sustainable Livelihoods Approaches at the Policy Level Word
		Institutions and Sustainable Livelihoods Word

Some papers contain elements in pdf format which need to be viewed using the Adobe Acrobat Reader. If your web-browser does not automatically open these files the necessary software is available free for downloading onto your computer from Adobe's web-site.