Applying people centred development approaches within FAO. Some practical lessons

Livelihood Support Programme Working Paper Number 15

The primary focus of the work is the people-centred or livelihood-type approaches actually used within FAO and development approaches used in different cultural-linguistic regions.

The objective of this work is to draw some lessons on the implementation of people centred approaches in FAO and, to some extent, different development contexts (cultural, linguistic, etc).

The work on people-centred or sustainable livelihood-type approaches should assist us in answering the following questions:

Is there anything really “new” about these “livelihoods approaches”, and, if so, what are the practical implications of this for working practice in FAO?
In what way do the institutional and cultural contexts of development interact with the approaches themselves in influencing project and programme performance?
How can development approaches, emerging from different cultural contexts, learn from each other?
Is there, in fact, an insurmountable divide between principle and practice in the development approaches of the 1990s?
In what way can we draw on the experience of the development approaches under review in order to overcome this divide?
The question then arises as to whether development approaches become redundant once the ideas that they embody have been mainstreamed? Is there any value-added to the everyday work of FAO officers from the use of these so-called ‘development approaches’?

(Also available in French and Spanish)

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