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This section offers a brief overview of the key elements of a sustainable livelihoods approach. It shows how the following elements are important:
A livelihoods approach is therefore a complement to conventional seeds/PGR interventions, but one that requires a different outlook. It encompasses more than just technical/genetic approaches, but also the social, political, economic, institutional perspectives. An integrated, cross-sectoral, multi-disciplinary approach is therefore needed. |
A sustainable livelihoods perspective offers a way of thinking about the linkages among vulnerability, poverty and environmental or natural resource management. It is grounded and contextual, looking at how different people pursue a range and combination of livelihood strategies given a particular vulnerability context, combination of assets and set of opportunities and constraints presented by institutional structures and processes. Emerging out of more participatory approaches to development, it draws inspiration from diverse work on vulnerability and assets (Swift, 1989); well-being, capabilities and entitlements (Sen, 1981; Drèze and Sen, 1989; Leach et al, 1997.); notions of capital, such as human and social capital; and institutions (Giddens, 1979; North, 1990; Mehta et al, 1999).
Poverty reduction and alleviation remain central to livelihoods perspectives and efforts to reduce poverty focus on strengthening people’s command of assets, expanding their opportunities to pursue different livelihoods strategies, and enhancing resilience in the face of risk, stresses and shocks. In this sense, livelihoods approaches go beyond - though they by no means preclude - poverty reduction efforts that focus on enhancing income.
Underpinning the livelihoods approach is a very different way of thinking about poverty. More conventional approaches to poverty reduction have tended to focus on poverty lines, headcounts, or other measures based on income and/or consumption criteria (Farrington, et al., 1999). A livelihoods approach, in contrast is less focused on needs but more on assets and capabilities. The focus is on people: what they are able to do with the resources they have, the varied opportunities and obstacles they face and the outcomes they are able to achieve. This more dynamic and people-centred approach is reflected in a widely accepted definition of sustainable livelihoods
‘A livelihood comprises capabilities, assets (including both material and social resources) and activities required for a means of living. A livelihood is sustainable when it can cope with and recover from stresses and shocks and maintain or enhance its capabilities and assets, both now and in the future, while not undermining the natural resource base.’(Chambers and Conway, 1992)
Sustainable livelihoods may be thought of as an approach to development that is people-centred and inter-disciplinary; as an objective based on a commitment to poverty elimination, strengthening local capacity and achieving sustainability; and as a framework to facilitate understanding of complex and dynamic livelihood systems (see Baumann, 2002). Since the mid-1990s, sustainable livelihoods approaches have been adopted by a range of organizations - including the Department for International Development (DfID), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), CARE and Oxfam - as a way of thinking more holistically about poverty reduction. A number of livelihood frameworks have been developed by these organizations as a tool to help make sense of the complexities of diverse livelihood systems (see Cotula, 2002). To some extent, variations among the framework reflect the particular agendas and priorities of these different organizations (or elements within them). The range of frameworks provides an indication of the flexibility in application that exists within a broader SL perspective.
Despite the differences among approaches or frameworks, a sustainable livelihoods perspective has several key elements:
it is people-centred, emphasising the decisions people make and actions they take with the resources that they have
it encompasses a broad range of assets and strategies which people draw on and pursue
its analysis is multi-level and it looks at the way in which local, national and global are linked
it is dynamic, focused on the assets and strategies people use to negotiate within and among different institutional arrangements and in changing, and often uncertain, environments. (FAO, 2000b; Moser and Norton, 2001; Scoones, 1998; DfID, 1998).
It is important to emphasise that a livelihoods approach or framework may be adopted and adapted to suit the needs of a particular context. This paper is broadly informed by, but does not rigorously apply, the approach developed at the Institute of Development Studies (Scoones, 1998). The framework is offered not as a ‘magic bullet’, but as a structured checklist to help develop questions in order to better understand complex relationships.
Figure 2.1: The IDS Sustainable Livelihoods Framework
Source: Scoones, 1998
A sustainable livelihoods perspective is useful for looking at both the contribution of seeds to sustainable livelihoods and for enabling understanding of issues of access. Sections III and IV will address these topics in more depth. In brief, however, looking at seeds and PGRs through a sustainable livelihoods lens highlights:
The broader role and significance of seeds and PGRs in people’s livelihood systems. From a livelihoods perspective, seeds and PGRs are regarded as one among a range of assets that people may possess. They enable adaptation to particular and changing contexts and conditions, contribute to building and maximising other productive assets, enable the pursuit of different livelihood strategies, and facilitate the realization of positive livelihood outcomes.
An SL perspective enables us to unpack what access to seeds and PGRs means in different settings for different groups of people. Simple availability of seeds and PGRs is not sufficient to achieve the contributions to livelihoods. Rather, access to seeds and PGRs is vital. Disaggregating access requires looking at the linkages and interactions among assets, institutions and policies in these different contexts. A livelihoods perspective focuses on the institutions and policies that shape access to seeds and PGRs.
Drawing on the discussion and framework above, this section provides an overview of the key elements of a sustainable livelihoods approach with particular reference to seeds/PGRs.
Contexts and Conditions
Contexts and conditions, also referred to as the vulnerability context, consist of characteristics or events in the external environment that shape people’s livelihood systems. The framework identifies a number of factors, including climate, agro-ecology, macro-economic conditions and terms of trade. Social differentiation is also an integral contextual factor. Social factors that differentiate people - such as gender, age, class, caste, and ethnicity - are important in understanding people’s access to and command of assets, the strategies that are open to them and the opportunities and constraints they face in pursuing these strategies.
When looking at access to natural resources generally, these contextual factors are sometimes disaggregated as shocks, trends and seasonal factors (Baumann, 2002; DfID, 1998).
shocks may be natural (floods, droughts), economic (economic crises) or political (conflict).
trends are more on-going processes of change, and may be economic, demographic, technological, or climatic.
seasonality refers to trends that have a seasonal dimension, including market prices, employment opportunities and food availability.
Differentiating contextual factors in this way distinguishes different degrees of predictability (Baumann, 2002). While shocks are characterised by great uncertainty and generally consist of events over which people have little control, trends and seasonality may be more predictable and allow for the development of strategies and responses to them. Understanding the degree and nature of uncertainty that exists around different contextual factors is therefore an important consideration when developing appropriate entry points.
Livelihood Assets: Human, Natural, Social, Physical and Financial 'Capital'
Sustainable livelihood approaches draw on the economic concept of capital to refer to the range of productive resources or assets which people command. The elaboration of different livelihood capitals endows the sustainable livelihoods approach with its holism and multi-disciplinarity. These capitals are identified and defined as:
natural capital: natural resource assets (land, soil, water, air) and environmental services (nutrient cycling, hydrological cycle)
financial capital: cash, credit, savings/debt and other economic assets
human capital: skills, knowledge, good health and physical ability to labour
social capital: social resources such as networks, social relations, claims, and associations
physical capital: the basic infrastructure such as transport, production equipment, storage facilities, livestock, agro-chemical inputs, technology
Seeds and plant genetic resources are an important asset in rural livelihoods, but do not fit neatly within the classification above. Rather, they embody elements of natural, physical and human capital. While seeds and plant genetic resources are often regarded as natural capital, on-going processes of seed selection and plant breeding and management - whether in formal or informal seed systems - mean that they also, in part, embody the application of human knowledge and skills. Technology-intensive methods of developing new varieties, some may argue, mean that certain seeds represent physical capital. The conceptual debate about how seeds and plant genetic resources should be defined and classified is beyond the bounds of this paper. For the purposes of this paper, the important point is that seeds and PGRs combine several kinds of capital.
More relevant for this analysis is how different assets are linked and how certain combinations of assets produce portfolios that in turn affect the pursuit of different livelihood strategies. Understanding assets, therefore, requires attention to these interactions and the ways in which they may be clustered, sequenced or substituted to enable different livelihood strategies (Scoones, 1998)
Livelihood Strategies
Given a particular asset profile and set of opportunities and constraints, people may pursue a range and combination of livelihood strategies:
Agricultural or natural-resource based: agricultural intensification focuses on increasing the output per unit area through increasing inputs; extensification may refer to increasing the land under cultivation or use of uncultivated land, such as wild areas and common land.
Diversification: engaging in a range of non-agricultural or non-natural resource based activities through, for example, off-farm income earning.
Migration: this may be voluntary or involuntary.
It is important to note, of course, that more often than not these strategies are pursued in combination or sequence. Recent work in southern Africa, for example, emphasises that the pursuit of diverse strategies is an important and well-established part of rural livelihoods. Scoones and Wolmer (2003) argue that ‘most farmers in Africa are part-time, combining agriculture with other livelihood activities, including a range of off-farm work both locally and further afield...This has been a pattern since the colonial era, and circular migration, with remittance flows financing local investment and asset accumulation through the demographic cycle, has been a key facet of rural livelihood strategies for the best part of the last century.’ Seeds and PGRs, then, mean different things to different people depending on the type and combination of livelihood strategies being pursued. Interventions must take on board this type of understanding.
Institutions and Policies
Institutions, organizations and policies play a crucial role in the ‘social life of seeds’ (Longley, 2000). This ‘life’ is shaped by the relations and networks among people, linking a range of actors and organizations including farmers, agricultural extension workers, state or international agricultural research systems, domestic and multinational corporations. The interaction and interplay of these actors is importantly constituted by institutions, which span local, national and international levels; these institutions may range from informal systems of gift-giving, exchange or loans to more formal institutions such as the market, extension systems, tenure regimes and regulatory frameworks.
Institutions and policies exert their influence on livelihoods in many ways: they shape contextual factors and conditions, are important in determining access to livelihood capitals and affect livelihood strategies through structuring opportunities and constraints. Institutions may be defined as ‘regularised patterns of behaviour that emerge, in effect, from underlying structures or sets of ‘rules in use’... and are maintained by people’s practices, or indeed their active ‘investment’ in those institutions’ (Leach et al., 1997). A livelihoods understanding of institutions encompasses both formal and informal institutions. The former includes regulatory frameworks and policies at different levels, but also institutions such as the market; examples of informal institutions would include local systems of exchange.
In a livelihoods perspective, institutions are not the same as organizations - one can distinguish them by noting that if institutions are sets of rules or practices, organizations represent the players or actors (Leach et al., 1997). In the context of seeds and PGRs, some of the key players include farmers and other rural people that rely on seeds and PGRs for their livelihoods, the public sector, private sector, and NGOs. The interactions among these actors are shaped and determined by institutions ranging from the market, public and private extension systems, contractual arrangements for seed multiplication, informal systems of seed exchange, gift-giving and labour-sharing and many others.
The box (2.1) below provides some examples of some of the institutions that are important in shaping and mediating access to seeds and plant genetic resources. While some of these institutions are well-established others are relatively new and emergent, particularly in developing country contexts. All, however, are subject to change through, among other things, economic, political, and indeed social forces - this makes the institutional context in any given setting highly dynamic.
Box 2.1: Making and Shaping Access to Seeds and PGRs: Examples of Institutions, Organizations and Policies
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Global level/trends:
National level:
Local Level:
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A livelihoods perspective therefore draws attention to institutions and policies that shape access across a range of scales from the micro to the macro. Rather than fixed systems, institutions are dynamic. They govern the interactions of diverse sets of actors, and create and shape the pathways that people negotiate to secure access to resources or pursue particular livelihood strategies. Institutional analysis involves attention to the politics of power and control that always underlie questions of access.
A livelihoods perspective helps identify how multiple and often overlapping institutions operate at many levels to shape local access to resources. While remaining locally grounded, sustainable livelihoods approaches consider how policies and institutions at international and national levels influence livelihood options locally. In this sense sustainable livelihoods perspectives offer a way of overcoming dichotomised thinking about ‘local vs. global’ by suggesting the ways in which they are interlinked. In practice, the emergence of global frameworks and agreements in the areas of intellectual property, access and benefit sharing and biosafety, as well as national regulatory frameworks on certification and release, have important implications for local access to seeds and PGRs.
In this changing context, the type of analysis enabled by a livelihoods perspective - starting at the micro-level ‘and looking upwards and outwards at broader institutional and policy arenas’ (Scoones and Wolmer, 2003) will become ever more important. This does not mean to say that more conventional technical interventions are less significant. A livelihoods perspective aims to situate such efforts in a broader understanding. This means that entry points must encompass not only more conventional technical domains but policy and institutional ones too, often in combination. If the big challenges of poverty reduction, creating sustainable livelihoods and so on - so often at the centre of development agencies mission statements - are to be realised, then a more holistic and with this sophisticated approach is needed. The remaining sections of this paper attempt to spell out what this might entail.
