Adopting a Sustainable Livelihoods Approach to Water Projects: Implications for Policy and Practice
Alan Nicol (2000)
Is the desire that the 'consumer pays' for water usage having a negative impact on poverty reduction? If poor consumers do pay, is it as a result of the health benefits promoted by international agencies or because of other perceived socio-economic benefits? How can Sustainable Livelihoods Approaches (SLAs) improve understanding of the impacts of improved water supplies on options for poverty reduction? Nicol identifies the principal features of a livelihoods approach to water supply projects as a first step in reorienting work in the sector. Issues covered include the pre-eminence of a health-based view within the water and sanitation sector; using the SL framework to analyse water in the context of poor households, and assessing the operational and theoretical implications of adopting a SL approach.
Findings
Using the SL framework as an analytical tool, and considering water and sanitation projects from previous studies such as in the Horn of Africa, Nicol finds that:
- The emphasis on the health impacts of water projects does not fit well with household's own demands and priorities. Its increasing advocacy by agencies at an international level could constitute overemphasis.
- The wide range of vulnerability contexts and shocks associated within which people gain and secure access to water resources means blueprints for water supply projects and single technical solutions will not work. Instead, a range of responses for different situations, spanning emergency situations to longer-term development contexts, is needed.
- To encourage demand for water services in particular, and to ensure that communities can be engaged in self-financing their development, greater attention has to be paid to the role of water within wider household livelihood strategies.
- SL analysis demands a greater quantity and quality of knowledge of households and their livelihood strategies than current methods, and this can be costly in terms of time and money.
- A multidisciplinary range of skills is needed to get the best results from the SL approach (including politics, economics and anthropology), but these are currently underrepresented in the water sector.
- Given the division frequently existing between health, agriculture and water sectors, it is important that institutional problems do not compromise project implementation.
Implications
In moving away from an emphasis on health benefits, the paper addresses the need to understand the impacts of improved water supplies on the socio-economic 'livelihood' circumstances of households. Major implications for future policy and practice in this sector include:
- The SL approach can assist in forging stronger links between the expectations of policy makers and donors (in their drive to mobilise communities around a 'demand-based' theme) and the capacities and motivations of communities and households to undertake this new role.
- Water should be treated as an asset and a good: Understanding water at a household level means addressing the productive uses of water as an asset - whether watering animals, supplementing plot irrigation or producing local drinks - as well as its uses as a social good as part of a households' daily requirement for cleaning, washing and drinking.
- Institutional development components of water supply projects should be more closely linked to developing social capital. This helps to benefit the poorest members of communities and to assist in their access to and communication with the 'institutions ' responsible for water supply development.
- Understanding the significance of sequencing interventions is an important factor in ensuring project developments achieve long - term poverty reduction through achieving sustainable (and diverse) livelihoods. Although operationally difficult to incorporate, the sequencing of interventions within livelihood strategies is crucial. For example a pastoral community may need improved veterinary extension services and water for forage, but these would require careful sequencing to avoid overgrazing and/or the transmission of livestock diseases in a given locale.
- The time costs of water use is an important variable affecting people's ability to use water services. Close attention to time costs of the poor in specific contexts (e.g. rural, urban) and at different moments (e.g. seasonal variations) can help to fine tune projects to achieve better livelihood outcomes.
- Knowledge generation is often an elite process which excludes the poor. Therefore, improving poor people's access to relevant information can empower them to make better resource use decisions. Similarly, improved understanding by governments and other organisations of poor people's livelihoods and decision-making processes can help them build a better picture of how livelihoods change over the longer - term.
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