4. EFFECTIVENESS OF THE SLA FOR UNDERSTANDING ACCESS TO NATURAL RESOURCE ISSUES AND FOR DEVELOPING STRATEGIES TO TARGET THESE

The conceptual contribution and potential of the SLA for an understanding of natural resource management issues has been outlined in section 2. What has been its contribution to understanding these issues in practice? As suggested in section 1, this question is difficult to answer as there are no set rules for conducting livelihoods analysis. The only firm position taken by SL advocates is that SL research must be based on the SL principles outlined in section 2. Apart from this, the framework can be used as a checklist or means of structuring ideas; can be used in combination with tools and methods from other methodologies (e.g. surveys); and approaches (e.g. rights based approaches). The SL framework can also be applied for many development purposes, such as: pure research; identification of development priorities; program design; project planning; and monitoring and evaluation. In other words, the actual tools for analysis and the purposes for which these are used are no different than those that had existed before the emergence of the SL approach. So what difference does the SL approach make to the analysis of ANR issues?^[2]

4.1 Evaluation of the SLA and its capacity to understand ANR issues

The application of the SLA to questions of ANR usually aims to test the approach itself, as much as to meet other more instrumental development objectives. Papers usually deconstruct the ways in which the SLA was applied and where and how it was felt to be useful or not. In addition there has been a seminar on Rural Poverty and Natural Resources and a seminar on Sustainable Livelihoods and the Environment in the DfID Sustainable Livelihoods Seminar Series; both directed to sharing approaches, principles and lessons. Along with more generalised analysis of the SLA as a whole, this provides plenty of material for a consideration of the value of SLA in relation to ANR issues. The following table provides an overview of the main types of SLA application to ANR issues.

Table 4.1 Types of SL application to ANR issues

The broad consensus of the case study material is that the SLA has contributed towards the understanding of development constraints and opportunities related to ANR. The context of this consensus has to be borne in mind; SLA development is well funded and has so far had mainly insider appraisal. It has not been exposed to an academic audience nor benefited from the suggestions that such an exposure might contribute^[3]. Nevertheless, with this in mind, the following are the benefits that the case studies have isolated in the application of the SLA to ANR issues:

• Encourages a broad analysis of development problems;

• Shifts focus onto livelihood outcomes rather than project objectives and on the full-range of project impacts not just cash and physical outputs;

• Provides a tool for learning about the complex local impacts of NR projects;

• Encourages the cross-checking of data and the analysis of field results rather than their simple aggregation;

• Has shifted the sector specific focus of many NR projects to include alternative interventions that support the livelihoods of the poor;

• Provides a check-list for the development of a comprehensive livelihoods baseline;

• Enables a more realistic prediction of potential outcomes and impacts of projects;

• Encourages a more participatory approach to be taken;

• Maintains a focus on both long and short-term development strategies.

The case studies experience also reveals a broad commonality in the constraints experienced and the shortcomings of the SLA identified. It is all very well to have acknowledged the diversity of rural livelihoods; the shifting, complex, contingent web of relations that constitute institutions; the interaction of social, political and economic forces across all levels; and the importance of including a temporal and dynamic perspective; but then what? Researchers and practitioners have come across the following difficulties in using the SLA in practice:

• SLA is time and money consuming;

• Requires multi-disciplinary teams and specialist SL training;

• It is difficult to quantify information on capital assets gathered through SL and so difficult to gain a comparative assessment of ANR issues.

• Typically this leads to a mass of grey pros and cons and the compilation of lists.

• Heavy reliance on participatory techniques further complicates quantification.

• Difficult to generate sector wide and national level policies as required by national governments and donor policy makers.

• Difficult to draw the link between micro and macro level institutional processes and how they affect ANR issues in practice.

• Difficult to understand the role of the market and private sector using SLA

• The SLA should include a focus on cultural capital as these are critical for the understanding of ANR issues.

• The SLA is based largely on experiences from English-speaking countries.

A 2001 seminar on the value of the SLA for an exploration of Rural Poverty and ANR issues asked 48 practitioners from diverse backgrounds to share their experiences. The participants were asked to compare positive and negative aspects of the SLA in 1999 and 2001. They concluded that in 1999 SLA:

Provided a focus on the policy environment
Provided policy makers with a common language for development
Made for more people focused policy.

However it was also felt that SL could not be applied at the national level and many of the factors represented in the PIPs box were felt to be overly complex. Two years later it was shown that in fact SLA:

Could be applied at a national level
Were complementary to PRSPs and RBAs
Provided a reality check for macro approaches in aid
And improved policy links for projects.

What this assessment reveals is that the SLA has responded well to constructive criticism and that there has been a concerted attempt by practitioners to contribute towards its development. Some of the ANR relevant examples of the suggestions that have been made to overcome the constraints identified above are given below.

Table 4.2: Suggestions for SLA compatible and complementary tools of analysis

4.2 Policies, institutions and processes in the SLA

There is one conceptual area in which the integrity of the SL framework itself (rather than its application) has received particular criticism. This is its treatment of policies, institutions and processes and the position (or lack of a position) taken with regard to power and politics. The partial treatment of power and politics in the SL framework is a shortcoming that is the subject of an ongoing internal debate amongst those institutions involved in developing the framework. The SLA does not provide a tool to distinguish between policies and the power relations that underpin policies; between a structure of rights to natural resources, for example, and the political negotiation that is part of the process by which these rights are defined. Without a means to understand these underlying processes and bring them to the foreground of the SLA it is arguable that the contribution that SLA can make is seriously impaired. To relate this to ANR: line department bureaucrats may raise funds to secure favorable posts which may be extracted from the poor in the form of excess payment for water, trees and seeds. The rural poor may well thus be producing more surplus than is assumed, but their lack of power in such micro-interactions restricts the extent to which they can invest it to enhance other assets or to secure livelihoods. These processes are critical to reproducing poverty, yet they are not transparent and cannot be captured within the SL notion of PIPs.

One recommended solution is to incorporate political capital into the framework as an endogenous variable termed 'political capital' which would then become the sixth capital asset. Political capital would be understood as the opportunity and ability to use power in ways that maintain or enhance political and economic positions and so increase livelihood options. While the operation of politics and power is clearly evident in 'policies, institutions and processes', it is also a capital asset in the same way as other assets included in the SL framework, on which 'individuals draw to build their livelihoods'. In the context of sustainable livelihoods, it is an asset that enables (or conversely can hinder) individuals and groups to use broader institutions and processes to make their livelihoods more secure, and so an understanding of it is key to strategies that hope to create sustainable livelihoods options to eradicate poverty.

The concept of political capital strengthens the link between SL as a framework for analysis and SL as a practical approach to development. It provides a means by which power and politics, which are routinely blamed for the failure of development programs, can be subjected to rigorous analysis in the project context. If political capital is analytically posited in relation to other capital assets at the local level, it places the focus on how it is locally constituted and reproduced and therefore how a project intervention can be targeted. This is also important because it draws attention to the transition costs of particular programs and project interventions. Policies that aim to empower the poor, for example supporting their claims on common land or improving access knowledge of rights and access to information, may meet resistance from those who stand to lose. An understanding of how political capital is locally situated not only enables appropriated interventions but also a judicious analysis of risk and of possible human costs of project interventions.

The political and policy context of ANR

Some of the most consistent and constructive criticism of the SLA has come from rights-based approaches (RBA). These approaches are rooted in international law and are concerned with the protection of claims that have been legitimised by social structures and norms. The concern is both with the rights that people should be entitled to and how to enhance the capacity of the poor to claim their rights and the related provisions. The RBA critique is that the SLA is stronger on the micro level than an understanding of micro-macro policy linkages and does not provide a means to understand the ways in which power relations produce and reproduce deprivation. Despite being cognisant of the importance of PIPs, the SLA tends to focus more on the technical aspects of development. In particular, by being open to all manner of institutional linkages, and 'win-win' solutions to development problems, the SLA avoids taking a political position. Whilst useful at one level, this provides no benchmark for action or prioritization and glosses over the fact that in the end options and choices are usually not institutional and technical matters, but political ones. The RBA suggests that one practical way forward is to consider the rights to which the poor are entitled by international law. These provide focus points for the analysis of the factors that influence livelihoods and entitlements such as social and political contestation over rights; entry points for practical action; and benchmarks for non-partisan political positions on priorities. Moser and Norton (2001) have developed a human rights and livelihoods matrix as a means to show how the capital asset framework of the SLA can be linked to RBA. The following table extracts the example of natural capital from this matrix to show the relevance of the arguments made to ANR.

Table 4.3 Natural capital and human rights

Source: Adapted from Moser and Norton (2001)

The RBA critique of SLA provides a viable suggestion for how to overcome SLA shortcomings related to power relations, PIPs and priorities for action. It is worth investigating what the practical challenges of such an adapted SLA approach would mean for the analysis of issues related to ANR.

4.3 SLA perspective as a framework for developing strategies for enabling access of poor to NR

The effectiveness of the SLA as a tool for developing strategies is less established than the SLA as a diagnostic tool. A key concern in the development of country level development strategies has been how to integrate poverty and environmental policies into coherent growth-oriented macro-economic frameworks. In many ways SLA as a framework for developing strategies complements what has been termed the 'new architecture of aid' (Farrington 2001). The SLA as an approach and the new architecture as the means of organizational delivery constitute a concerted policy focus on 'mainstreaming' poverty and the environment. Indeed at the planning level the SLA has been important for identifying entry-points into projects and ensuring a livelihoods focus even in sectoral natural resource projects. The analogy of an 'acupuncture approach' has been used in this connection: holistic diagnosis of the problem but the treatment is specific and focused (Ashley and Carney 1999).

These benefits at the planning level, become complicated in implementation. The international development targets and new architecture of aid, as well as the SLA itself, have to operate in country level planning contexts, which are slow to change. Partly this is because projects have to be managed by a single department to be effective and hence Sector Wide Approaches (SWAps) are still the planning norm, especially with respect to natural resources. Attempts at inter-departmental cooperation for wider poverty alleviation objectives related to ANR are fraught with administrative difficulties. Further the integration of some SL principles into SWAps will have a profound effect on their content. When these are aimed at the empowerment of the poor these are likely to meet administrative and political resistance. This is particularly so in the case of natural capital, the exploitation of which has disproportionately benefited the elite in many poor countries.

This last point is related to another difficulty of the SLA perspective for planning development. The objective of the SLA is to empower the poor, but despite the many principles that underpin the SLA, there are none that can guide practitioners in what to do if this objective meets resistance. The approach is to talk, persuade and find 'win-win' solutions; in some instances this can be positive but clearly this is unlikely to be effective when interests are vested in the status quo. A review of the potential of using SLA in Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers concludes that 'the framework can best be seen as a device for enabling and facilitating inter-disciplinary dialogue and analysis' (Norton and Foster 2001: 31) and that to take the analysis forward in a complex context would inevitably require other methodologies and approaches.

Another area of difficulty identified in developing strategies using the SLA is a lack of understanding of how the framework operates and resistance to the use of the framework. In the former instance some practitioners have found it rewarding to work through the SLA with local partners and thus arrive at a shared understanding for the development of strategies; see the text box below.

In other instances it has been easier to simply drop the SLA as a shared tool for strategy development and use it as a back-up point of reference. Concerning resistance to the use of the SLA; this usually comes from development practitioners who have their own systems and frameworks for the planning of development strategies. The SL framework would benefit from an exploration of how and when this is grounded simply in established working patterns (which is not necessarily negative); when it is simply resistance to novelty; and where there is an opportunity to explore the cross-fertilization of approaches for planning development.

The practical value of the SLA for ANR is further challenged by a simple lack of direction. Partly this is because the concepts are new and unfamiliar to those in planning positions. More fundamentally this lack of direction is due to the rapid pace of social, economic, political and environmental change as outlined in section 1. SLA has been part of the analytical and policy process that has dispelled environmental and development narratives. This engagement with complex rural realities is progressive but it also means that there are few guidelines to follow in development practice. Practitioners using SL to develop strategies have found themselves compiling long 'wish lists' and not being able to identify priority areas for action.

The isolation and 'bullet-pointing' of constraints and opportunities in the use of the SLA has become a standard fare of SL influenced work. The livelihoods web-site provides regularly updated lessons from the field on this subject; much of which is ANR related. The Proceedings from the Forum on Operationalising Sustainable Livelihoods Approaches complied by DfID and FAO carry plenty of lessons on the application of the SLA to ANR specific to all parts of strategy development (project design, planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, project redesign). Rather than revisiting this information, the following are what I would isolate as the over-arching challenges in using the SLA to develop ANR strategies.

Prioritising Actions Whilst the advantage of the SLA is its holistic approach, the analysis does not always result in clear directions on priority actions to improve livelihoods.

Unpacking Policies, Institutions and Processes The SLA is still a long way from providing a comprehensive analysis of how PIPs work and hence from recommending strategies to change and improve them. Too many key variables are contained in one box in the framework without proper guidance for how these could be unpacked.

Changing the Way Organizations Work Following through the implications of the SLA would mean that institutions have to change and instigating changes in policies, institutions and processes often requires acting to changing the way that organizations work. This fact applies at all levels; from changing the way that line departments operate to challenging property rights at the local level.

4.4 Watershed, Watershed Plus and Sustainable Livelihoods in India

The DfID supported watershed projects operating in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Orissa are a good illustration of the strengths and weaknesses of the SLA as a tool for enhancing ANR. The significance of a watershed for planning development is that it represents the most rational unit at which to plan for integrated conservation and management of natural resources for optimal production. Early projects took ecological objectives as their starting points when selecting the scope and scale of interventions. Projects were managed along a public works model with complex tendering processes, detailed work plans, target orientation and a total lack of participation. Watershed projects run along these lines have been implemented in India since before Independence.

There has been a transformation from this early concept of watershed management to one of watershed development. The rationale behind the new concept of watershed management in a nutshell, is that the rehabilitation and development of environmental resources in an integrated manner can lead to the development of economic resources within the watershed. For this to occur, holistic watershed development has to move away from a physical target focus and incorporate associated, non-land based activities in an integrated approach. This reflects the recognition that many land-based activities do not help the landless or the poor, and that the management of natural resources has to be linked to the development of secure livelihoods in order to be sustainable. Emphasis has been placed on a participatory approach that involves people in both the planning and the management of interventions. The Government of India passed Guidelines for Watershed Management in 1994 to create an institutional structure that would support watershed management along these newly conceived lines.

The SLA has been influential in changing the way that watershed development is understood in Orissa and Andhra Pradesh. Shifting the focus of development efforts from resources to people and their livelihood outcomes lies at the heart of SLA. The SLA did not instigate this shift in focus; it grew out of decades of failed watershed projects, lessons from participatory development and the poverty alleviation focus of centrally planned development projects in India. However the SLA provided a coherent framework within which these concerns could be discussed as well as tools with which to analyse watershed-related development problems and plan appropriate interventions. This illustrates a point that has been made several times in this paper; SLA may not be new but it has 'come of age' in a receptive policy environment and is able to provide practical support in tackling complex issues, even if this is only through a shared point of reference.

The design of the Orissa Rural Livelihoods Project was already well advanced when the design team started to use the SL framework. This was mainly due to timing; the SLA was still being developed. Nevertheless the project design was already based on the broader notion of watershed management and had included interdisciplinary studies and attempts at enabling local participation. When the team encountered the SLA towards the end of the project design, it was found to be useful in integrating the insights gained into the complexity of poverty and drawing out the implications for potential project activities. In particular the asset pentagon contributed to the notion of 'watershed plus'; projects that would include activities targeted at the poor and aimed at building mainly social, human and financial, rather than natural capital.

The DfID funded watershed projects in Orissa and Andhra Pradesh are 'watershed-plus' projects and they deviate significantly from conventional watershed projects. The SLA has been instrumental in: (1) providing a point of reference and common language between the donor, state government, NGOs and consultants; (2) moving the focus away from natural capital alone to the total capital asset base of the poor; (3) building on local capacity and strengths; (4) addressing macro-level constraints through advocacy for pro-poor approaches.

The experience of the DfID funded Rural Livelihoods Projects in India also raises several questions about both the utility and limitations of the SLA.

It is highly debatable whether the SLA per se, as opposed to a general awareness of the obvious role of power imbalances, highlighted much about power relations. Even if the SLA added marginal value in this respect, it was not able to pinpoint anything specific about power relations, at least in the case of Orissa, which has design implications.

The SLA was effective because the two state governments were receptive to the notions contained within SLA. What the utility of the SLA would have been had it met any resistance is an open question.

Related to the point above, despite a general receptiveness to the notions of the SLA, there have been only marginal changes in organizational and institutional power structures at all levels that continue to constrain the livelihood strategies of the poor.

The notion of watershed-plus has led to the generation of a large number of project activities with an unclear relation to the ultimate goal of sustainable livelihoods.

The SLA provides no guidance on points of policy and politics; such as what ought to be the division of tasks between local government and local committees.