SUSTAINABLE RURAL LIVELIHOOD

Presented by: Ms. Nishu Kanwar Bhati

Sustainable development is development which meets the needs of the present without compromising

the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

The Economic Perspective

• Efficient resource allocation should have the effect of maximizing utility from consumption.

• The amount one can consume during a period and still be as well off at the end of the period.

The Ecological Perspective

• sustainability must involve limits on population and consumption levels.

• An ecological economic approach requires that resources be allocated in such a fashion that they threaten neither the system as a whole nor the key components of the system.

The Social Perspective

• Recognize the social component of development as an essential part of the new paradigm.

• Social sustainability occurs when the formal and informal processes; systems; structures; and relationships actively support the capacity of current and future generations to create healthy and liveable communities. Socially sustainable communities are equitable, diverse, connected and democratic and provide a good quality of life."

A synthesis of these perspectives A concept of sustainable development must

remedy social inequities and environmental damage, while maintaining a sound economic base.

Conservation of natural capital for sustainable economic production and intergenerational equity.

both population and total resource demand must be limited in scale,

Social equity, the fulfilment of basic health and educational needs, and participatory democracy

SECTORIAL SUSTAINABILITY

Agriculture On the production side, current high-input

techniques which are leading to serious soil degradation and water pollution and overdraft must be replaced by organic soil rebuilding, integrated pest management, and efficient irrigation. This in turn implies much greater reliance on local knowledge and participatory input into the development of agricultural techniques.

On the consumption side, both limits on population growth and greater equity and efficiency in food distribution are of central importance given probable resource limitations on production.

ENERGY

A non-fossil energy system would be significantly more decentralized, adapted to local conditions and taking advantage of opportunities for wind, biomass, and off-grid solar power systems. This is unlikely to occur without a major mobilization of capital resources for renewable energy development in countries now rapidly expanding their energy systems.

Both supply limits and environmental impacts should be considered.

INDUSTRY

The new concept of “industrial ecology” implies the restructuring of whole industrial sectors based on a goal of reducing emissions and reusing materials at all stages of the production cycle.

Corporate reform and “greening” as well as a broad cooperative effort between corporations and government will be needed to achieve goal.

Renewable Resource SystemsMultilateral agreements and global

funding are needed to conserve transboundary resources;

national resource management systems must be shifted from goals of exploitation to conservation and sustainable harvesting; and

local communities must be strongly involved in resource conservation.

Rural Dilemma

Limited access to off-farm employment

Skewed income distribution Poor transport, basic

services and market infrastructure

Low literacy rates Climate change and

ecosystem change Threat to rural livelihoods Vulnerability of rural sectors

-agriculture, coastal resources, energy, forestry, tourism, and water

Rural Poverty, Disease and Low Productivity

Feminization of rural areas = Feminization of agriculture = Feminization of poverty and disease (Youth exodus to cities)

Social protection (absolute poverty strategies) vs productive and sustainable livelihoods

Comparative advantage that does not translate to competitiveness

Spatial imbalances & Rural-urban disconnecting

Overdependence on subsistence agriculture

Food Insecurity.

Advance perspectives over Conventional livelihood concepts

Production Sustainability

Equity

Capability

Poverty line

Employment

Sustainable Livelihood

• A livelihood comprises the 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, maintain or enhance its capabilities and assets, while not undermining the natural resource base.

Livelihood is defined as adequate stocks and flows of food and cash to meet basic needs. Security refers to secure ownership of, or access to,

resources and income-earning activities, including reserves and

assets to offset risk, ease shocks and meet contingencies. Sustainable

refers to the maintenance or enhancement of resource

productivity on a long term basis. A household may be enabled to gain sustainable livelihood security in

many ways-------

Through ownership of land, livestock or trees,

Rights to grazing, fishing, hunting or gathering;

Through stable employment with adeqaute renumeration;

Or through varied repertoires of activities.

Determinants of livelihood

The initial determinants of livelihood strategy are:

3.1 Birth: Many livelihoods are largely predetermined by accident of birth. Livelihoods of this sort may assign: in village India, children may be born into a caste with an assigned role as potters, shepherds, or washer people.

3.2 Gender : As socially defined, it is also a pervasive ascriptive determinant of livelihood activities.

3.3 Inherited livelihood: A person may be born, socialized and apprenticed into an inherited livelihood – as a cultivator with land and tools, a pastoralist with animals, a forest dweller with trees, a fisherperson with boat and tackle, or a shopkeeper with shop and stick. Each of these may create a new household or households in the same occupation.

The nature of human livelihoods4.1 The simple definition of a livelihoods as a means of

securing a living. It summarizes a reality which comes into focus as being complex as its parts are found and named, and its structure unraveled.

4.2 In our provisional anatomy of a household livelihood, we postulate four categories of parts:

People Their livelihood capabilities )Proprietorship

Activities What they do )

Assets Tangible (resources and stores) And intangible (claims and access)Which provide material and social means

portfolios

Gains or outputs

A living, what they gain from what They do

Key elements of Sustainable Rural Livelihood

Creation of working days

Poverty reduction

Well being and capabilities

Livelihood adaptations,

vulnerability and resilence

Natural resource base sustainability

Livelihood Resources

The ability to pursue different livelihood strategies is dependent on the basic material and social, tangible and intangible assets that people have in their possession.

livelihood resources may be seen as the ‘capital’ base from which different productive streams are derived from which livelihoods are constructed.

Natural capital – the natural resource stocks (soil, water, air, genetic resources etc.) and environmental services (hydrological cycle, pollution sinks etc) from which resource flows and services useful for livelihoods are derived.

Economic or financial capital – the capital base (cash, credit/debt, savings, and other economic assets, including basic infrastructure and production equipment and technologies) which are essential for the pursuit of any livelihood strategy.

Human capital – the skills, knowledge, ability to labour and good health and physical capability important for the successful pursuit of different livelihood strategies.

Social capital – the social resources (networks, social claims, social relations, affiliations, associations) upon which people draw when pursuing different livelihood strategies requiring coordinated actions.

Checklist of key questions arise:• Sequencing – What is the starting point for

successfully establishing a particular livelihood strategy? Is one type of livelihood resource an essential precursor for gaining access to others?

• Substitution – Can one type of capital be substituted for others? Or are different capitals needed in combination for the pursuit of particular livelihood strategies?

• Clustering – If you have access to one type of capital, do you usually have access to others? Or is there a clustering of particular combinations of livelihood resources associated with particular groups of people or particular livelihood strategies?

• Access – Different people clearly have different access to different livelihood resources. This is dependent on institutional arrangements, organisational issues, power and politics. A socially differentiated view to analysing livelihoods is therefore critical, one that disaggregates the chosen unit of analysis – whether community, village or household – and looks at individuals or groups of social actors and their relationships, in relation to the range of relevant dimensions of difference (wealth, gender, age and so on) and the distribution of control over resources.

• Trade-offs – In pursuing a particular portfolio of livelihood strategies, what are the trade-offs faced by different people with different access to different types of livelihood resource? Depending on who you are, differential access to different types of capital may have positive or negative implications in terms of the success or otherwise in the pursuit of a sustainable livelihood.

LIVELIHOOD STRATEGIES:

Broadly, these are seen to cover the range of options open to rural people.

• Either you gain more of your livelihood from agriculture (including livestock rearing, aquaculture, forestry etc.) through processes of intensification (more output per unit area through capital investment or increases in labour inputs) or extensification (more land under cultivation),

• or you diversify to a range of off-farm income earning activities,

• or you move away and seek a livelihood, either temporarily or permanently, elsewhere.

• Or, more commonly, you pursue a combination of strategies together or in sequence.

Some challenges for advocates of livelihood approaches

Food Security

Resource degradation

Distributional issues

Agricultura

l intensification/extensification

• between capital-led (supported often by external inputs and policy-led) and labour-led (based on own labour and social resources and a more autonomous process) intensification.

Livelihood

diversificati

on

• Diversification therefore may involve developing a wide income earning portfolio to cover all types of shocks or stress jointly or the strategy may involve focusing on developing responses to handle a particular type of common shock or stress through well developed coping mechanisms.

Migration

• between different migration causes (e.g. voluntary and involuntary movement), effects (e.g. reinvestment in agriculture, enterprise or consumption at the home or migration site) and movement patterns (e.g. to or from different places).

Key strengths of the approaches Studies have revealed that most rural

households rely on multiple income sources and adopt a range of survival strategies (including various types of migration and straddling, whereby some members stay in rural areas while others live semi-permanently in urban areas).

They recognize the importance of multiple actors (from the private sector to national-level ministries, from community-based organisations to the new decentralised government bodies), thereby widening the range of potential partners.

• The new approaches emphasis the importance of macro-level policy and institutions to the livelihood options of local communities and individuals, including the very poorest. They also stress the need for higher-level policy formulation to be based upon insights gained at the local level.

• They make a serious effort to understand the national and international linkages and the effect these have on people’s livelihoods.

• In rural areas sustainability is often associated with natural resources, which are clearly important but not the only aspect of sustainability which is important. Livelihoods approaches have learnt from participatory assessments that vulnerability is a core dimension of poverty. Reducing vulnerability – helping people to develop resilience to external shocks and increase the overall sustainability of their livelihoods – is therefore a priority

Sustainable Livelihood Outcomes

Livelihood • Increased no. of

working days• Poverty reduced• Well-being and

capabilities improved

Sustainability• Livelihood

adaptations, vulnerability and resilience enhanced.

• Natural resource base sustainability ensured

‘Sustainable livelihoods’ is thus a normative concept made up of

multiple and, sometimes, contested elements. Negotiating what is a

sustainable livelihood among the variety of stakeholders must

therefore be a first task in any intervention process.