Our Approach
The sustainable livelihoods approach is a way of thinking about the objectives, scope, priorities and methods of implementing development projects to eliminate poverty. In full collaboration with local people and development partners, it involves identification of existing assets and capabilities, and those needed from outside, to address priority concerns. This approach is not a prescriptive blueprint for project activities, but its core principles suggest a range of possible activities that help achieve to these fundamental livelihood goals:
- Increase local food security
- Strengthen sustainable natural resource use practices
- Increase sources and levels of income
- Increase resilience to economic and environmental challenges
- Improve household and community well-being
"A livelihood is environmentally sustainable when it maintains or enhances the local and global assets in which livelihoods depend, and has net beneficial effects on other livelihoods. A livelihood is socially sustainable which can cope with and recover from stress and shocks, and provide for future generations."
Chambers and Conway (1991)
