Purpose

To explore alternative routes to sustainable livelihoods in contrasting agro-ecological settings. The research project asks two questions- What institutional arrangements enable some poor people to achieve sustainable and secure livelihoods, when others fail? Secondly, what policies can support both groups?

Use of Sustainable Livelihoods Approaches

Between 1997 and 1999 the Sustainable Livelihoods Research Programme investigated livelihood processes through three case study countries: Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Mali. These sites offer differing livelihood systems and resource endowment environments.

This research has identified three main dimensions of sustainable livelihoods: productivity, equity and sustainability. Indicators of sustainable livelihoods encompass elements such as: consumption levels; access to assets; embeddedness in social networks; levels of human capital; and the absence of inequality, as well as processes such as: resilience, coping and adaptation. In order to gain a better understanding of how poor rural households respond to processes of political, social, economic and environmental change, an interdisciplinary approach has been taken. Alongside insights drawn from a number of disciplines (natural resource ecology, anthropology, sociology, environmental history, geography, political science and economics) is a wide range of qualitative and quantitative methods (eg. archival research with resource and air photo assessment, participatory rural appraisal, surveys). The aim of the research was to provide insights into livelihoods for national and international policy-makers and development planners. It was hoped that a focus on the institutional dimensions of livelihood change would highlight new perspectives for rural development policy, including: policy choices for macro-economic reform, natural resource tenure, agricultural investment in high and low resource endowment areas, settlement and migration and poverty and livelihood support projects and strategies.

A focus on institutions
Institutions play a critical role in livelihood sustainability, both in the sense of exclusion from access to institutions (such as credit markets), and exclusion by institutions (such as the tenure system preventing access to land for certain social actors). Institutional arrangements:

• determine who gains and who loses in the struggle for livelihood security and sustainability;
• are an essential, yet often overlooked, point of entry for policies to tackle vulnerability and natural resource degradation.

The role institutions play in livelihoods is uncovered in the research reports above. In Migration and Sustainable Livelihoods: A Critical Review of the Literature the authors focus on the links between migration and sustainable livelihoods, highlighting the institutional factors that connect the two.

Livelihood processes
Institutions mediate a range of livelihood processes in rural areas. The research project concentrated on four main processes:

• Agricultural intensification
• livelihood diversification
• crop-livestock integration
• migration