Understanding the local context of household livelihoods is not only necessary to ensure appropriate development strategies, but also as a basis for monitoring and evaluation, and a means of assessing potential for replication in other contexts.
Models of Sustainable Livelihoods and participatory approaches hold considerable potential but there are also difficulties. Most current experience of conducting livelihoods assessments so far has been as distinct studies, rather than being integrated to project planning and implementation. As such livelihood studies have tended to be time-consuming, and expensive. However this does not necessarily have to be the case. As livelihoods understandings are incorporated into project design, implementation and monitoring and evaluation, and the skills required to undertake these kinds of assessments are strengthened, these approaches will become more familiar and the methods more appropriate to local circumstances.
There are many different methods for understanding the context of poor people's livelihoods. Common to all is the need for effective communication and participation with beneficiaries. Terms such as 'participation' are now widely used, but often with very different meanings. In order to ensure that participation of beneficiaries is effective and meaningful, poor people need to have a stake in the decision making process. This means that poor people must be able to voice their interests, and at a stage in the planning process that allows for their input.
Very often participation is taken to mean a meeting at village level with little consideration of who attends, who is able to speak, the language that is used in the meeting, and whether there is any opportunity for participants to exert any real influence. While participatory methods such as PRA are widely advocated, the way in which they are implemented means that they are little more than public relations exercises designed to please donors, rather than to ensure effective participation.
It may not be absolutely necessary for everyone to participate in everything - as this can be inefficient and unwieldy. Skill and experience are required to determine when participation is appropriate. It is essential that the processes of participation, and the indicators for measuring the effectiveness of poor people's participation, are appropriate, clear and transparent.
Photo: H. Wagner.
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Box 11: Lessons from adopting livelihoods approaches Gaining a deeper understanding of poor people's livelihoods has had important contributions to many interventions. For example, the NGO Scale working in Cambodia applied the Sustainable Livelihoods analysis to assess how different poor people have different livelihood strategies, and how groups of poor may change. In some cases this may mean that having benefited from aquatic resource-based intervention to improve their livelihoods, such aquatic resource interventions are no longer the most appropriate to meet their current livelihood needs. Aquatic resources are often one component of wider household livelihood strategies that adapt to changing conditions. Aquaculture may in some circumstances be a temporary or irregular strategy for coping with a production failure. Households may not engage in aquaculture all year, every year - but rather when they need to do so. The 'success' of aquaculture uptake must be assessed in the light of such adaptive household strategies. Supporting households' capacity to adapt to change and cope with crisis should itself be an objective of poverty alleviation. Livelihoods approaches have also been useful in Monitoring & Evaluation exercises to assess who has been reached, what livelihood benefits have been realised, and the types of impacts on different groups within communities. Livelihoods approaches have provided government and partners with deeper insights. However we must be wary of promoting the jargon and losing the essence. In many situations district workers are very much aware of poverty and livelihoods issues, and have an intuitive understanding of local livelihoods that should be developed. Although it must be acknowledged that in many other cases, government workers are often characterised by their lack of understanding of local livelihoods and poor communication skills. |
Cambodian woman drying fish during the season of plenty.
Photo: G. Bizzari.
Photo: C. Boonjarus
Small-scale value adding improves shelf life, this helps if market access is limited.
Photo: J. Villamora.
In some countries, men may market fish products.
Photo: G. Bizzarri.
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Box 12: Fit and development initiatives in the aquatic resource One of the most important factors determining the extent to which the aquatic resources sector can be incorporated into current development initiatives is the objectives of individual households (regarding issues that include food security and income generation). Even assuming a case in which this sector has an established - by beneficiaries - role, it is typical that individual households have unique objectives in relation to how an activity serves them. A family that cultures fish, for example, might resist a new practice that involves higher labour inputs while still wanting to maintain a portion of its income from the activity. Conversely, another household that has had relatively little prior involvement may newly envisage fish culture as an important opportunity and devote relatively more resources to it. These differences in outlook, which do occur within even narrowly defined target groups, must be respected in the sense that they are unambiguous determinants of how useful a particular activity will become. Whether it be the selection of specific techniques (e.g. feeding strategy, spawning procedure) or aquaculture (sub)systems (e.g. seed production, nursing, other input supply, marketing), a closer fit of practices to household objectives is critical to realizing substantial and sustained benefits. Fitting interventions must be considered at the household level, not solely higher levels. Generally, we have worked with aquatic resources projects that have represented major initiatives that will substantially engage a target group. That is, something that a group will devote at least a moderate amount of resources towards. Another perspective is aquatic resource activities as valuable temporary activities (coping strategies) that a family uses when faced with an event, which may render its usual livelihood strategies ineffectual. For example, we have seen families switch from fish culture to capture fisheries during seasons in which flood conditions are expected or experienced. An acceptance of this view of an aquatic resource activity as a type of relief response would necessitate that development organizations view their contributions and impacts in an extended way: one that also looks at interventions as temporary, albeit useful, solutions to disruptive events |
