The term livelihood attempts to capture not just what people do in order to make a living, but the resources that provide them with the capability to build a satisfactory living, the risk factors that they must consider in managing their resources, and the institutional and policy context that either helps or hinders them in their pursuit of a viable or improving living. The basic livelihoods approach or framework is illustrated in Figure 1.
Figure 1: The Basic Livelihoods Framework
Source: Ellis (2003a; 2003b)
In the livelihoods approach, resources are referred to as ‘assets’ or ‘capitals’ and are often categorised between five or more different asset types owned or accessed by family members: human capital (skills, education, health), physical capital (produced investment goods), financial capital (money, savings, loan access), natural capital (land, water, trees etc.), and social capital (networks and associations). These asset categories are admittedly a little contrived, and not all resources that people draw upon in constructing livelihoods fit neatly within them. For example, livestock-keeping plays multiple roles that crossover at least three of these asset categories. Nevertheless, they serve a useful purpose in distinguishing asset types that tend to have differing connections to the policy environment. For example, human capital connects to social policies (education and health), while natural capital connects to land use, agricultural and environmental policies.
The livelihoods approach regards awareness of the asset status of poor individuals or households as fundamental to an understanding of the options open to them. One of its basic tenets, therefore, is that poverty policy should be concerned with raising the asset status of the poor, or enabling existing assets that are idle or underemployed to be used productively. The approach looks positively at what is possible rather than negatively at how desperate things are. As articulated by Moser (1998: p.1) it seeks “to identify what the poor have rather than what they do not have” and “[to] strengthen people’s own inventive solutions, rather than substitute for, block or undermine them”. This means identifying institutions that hamper and block people’s ability to construct improved livelihoods, whether such institutions are traditional (e.g. customary land tenure), modern (e.g. centralized state rules and regulations), or in some sense ‘post-modern’ (e.g. recent CBNRM policies and institutions).
In this context it is worth recalling North’s (1990) observation that just because institutions have been around a long time it does not mean that they work well or that they are equitable. Institutions often persist long after the reasons that called them into being have disappeared, and many ‘traditional’ institutions were constructed to serve the interests of hierarchical and patriarchal authority rather than to contribute to the empowerment and voice of ordinary citizens.
As illustrated in Figure 1, the things people do in pursuit of a living are referred to in the livelihood framework as livelihood ‘activities’. The risk factors that surround making a living are summarised as the ‘vulnerability context’, and the structures associated with government (national and local), authority, laws and rights, democracy and participation, and NRM institutions are summarised as the ‘policy and institutional context’. People’s livelihood efforts, conducted within these contexts, result in outcomes: higher or lower material welfare, reduced or raised vulnerability to food insecurity, improving or degrading environmental resources, and so on. Figure 1 is consciously devoid of arrows implying causality or feedback. Livelihoods are complex and changing. Although of course they encompass links between cause and effect, as well as cumulative processes, these cannot be captured adequately in such a simplified representation.
The livelihoods approach sets out to be people-centred and holistic, and to provide an integrated view of how people make a living within evolving social, institutional, political, economic and environmental contexts (Carney, 1998; Bebbington, 1999). It has proved to have considerable strengths, especially in recognising or discovering:
the multiple and diverse character of livelihoods (Ellis, 1998; 2000)
the prevalence of institutionalised blockages to improving livelihoods
the social as well as economic character of livelihood strategies
the principle factors implicated in rising or diminishing vulnerability
the micro-macro (or macro-micro) links that connect livelihoods to policies
Natural resource management institutions, understood as the customs, rules, laws and organizations that determine peoples access to different types of natural resource, evidently play critical roles in the livelihoods of rural households. The immediate connections to the livelihoods framework in Figure 1 are to natural capital (access to land, grazing, water, forests, fisheries and so on), and to the set of activities that comprise the occupational portfolio of the household. More than this, however, attention needs to be directed to the policies and institutions that mediate natural resource access, and the degree to which these facilitate rather than block asset transfers and substitutions that occur as people construct and change their livelihoods. Land tenure and other natural resource management institutions have multiple and complex effects in either reducing or increasing the vulnerability of households, and in enabling or disabling virtuous spirals of asset accumulation that can provide families with exit routes from poverty. The nature of these effects are explored as the argument of this paper proceeds in subsequent sections.
