The Livelihood Support Programme (LSP) evolved from the belief that FAO could have a greater impact on reducing poverty and food insecurity, if its wealth of talent and experience were integrated into a more flexible and demand-responsive team approach.
The LSP works through teams of FAO staff members, who are attracted to specific themes being worked on in a sustainable livelihoods context. These cross-departmental and cross-disciplinary teams act to integrate sustainable livelihoods principles in FAO’s work, at headquarters and in the field. These approaches build on experiences within FAO and other development agencies.
The programme is functioning as a testing ground for both team approaches and sustainable livelihoods principles.
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Access to natural resources sub-programme
Access by the poor to natural resources, including land, forests, water, fisheries and wildlife, is essential for sustainable poverty reduction. Landless people in rural areas are particularly vulnerable, because without secure access to land and other natural resources, they can have more difficulty obtaining food, accumulating other assets and recovering after environmental and economic shocks or misfortunes.
The main goal of this sub-programme is to build stakeholder capacity to improve poor people’s access to natural resources. It also aims to make sustainable livelihoods approaches more effective in reducing poverty among the poorest of the poor, particularly landless and near landless people.
Livelihoods diversification and enterprise development sub-programme
Diversification can assist households to insulate themselves from environmental and economic shocks, trends and seasonality - in effect, to be less vulnerable. Livelihoods diversification is complex, and strategies can include enterprise development.
The sub-programme aims to improve the effectiveness of FAO in addressing the needs and interests of poorer people in livelihood diversification programmes and projects. Specific objectives are:
To identify and appraise circumstances, inhibiting and enabling factors and approaches
To catalyse and facilitate use of innovative practices
To increase inter-disciplinarity and learning in FAO and partner agencies
