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This final section ties together issues and themes emerging from analysis in the previous sections. It offers a framework - or perhaps more accurately a structured checklist of possible questions to ask when looking at ways of improving access to seeds and PGRs. The key point of this framework is to suggest that seed/PGR interventions must be aware of a range of factors not usually in the frame. It also points to the limits of conventional seed/PGR interventions focused as they have tended to be on a) technical interventions and/orb) local scope. With a livelihoods perspective 'seeds/PGR interventions' may look somewhat different. For example, they may entail strengthening local capacity to access seeds in emergency situations instead of, or as a complement to, a conventional ‘seeds and tools approach’. While efforts to enhance and improve traditional systems of seed management and use are to be encouraged, wider processes (involving say markets dominated by large multinational seed houses, and governed by national and international regulations) may be increasingly important. Taking this broader view - encompassing a wider political economy of seeds/PGRs - is essential to any livelihoods focused initiative. The study concludes by identifying ways of further developing a livelihoods approach to issues of access around seeds and PGRs. |
At the outset of this report, we noted that while a technical focus on seeds is important, alone it is insufficient to fully realise the contributions seeds and PGRs make to achieving food security and eliminating poverty. In the preceding sections, we demonstrated how a sustainable livelihoods perspective helps to locate seeds and PGRs in the broader context of people’s livelihoods by a) identifying their contributions to livelihood security and b) drawing attention to crucial issues of access. Section III highlighted the direct contributions seeds and PGRs make to livelihoods, for example, through food and income. But, using an SL perspective, it also showed how seeds and PGRs fit into dynamic livelihood systems and facilitate complex strategies that enable adaptation to changing and often uncertain vulnerability contexts.
Strengthening access to seeds and PGRs is, of course, a central concern of this paper, however, a key point emerging from the discussion is that access to seeds and PGRs is not a single issue that can be understood in a uniform way, but rather an umbrella for many issues. While a livelihoods approach highlights the importance of access to natural resources, including seeds and PGRs, in achieving sustainable livelihoods, it also underscores how access issues vary greatly in different settings and for different groups of people. The great variation across settings is evident in the three case studies on emergency relief, wild and weedy foods, and farmer engagement with agricultural research (see Table 4.2). Two further important factors that are sources of the context specific nature of access issues are:
Resource differentiation: broadly, issues of access to seeds may differ from issues of access to plant genetic resources and from vegetatively propagated material; questions of access will differ depending on the particular type of seed or PGR in question.
Social differentiation: differences in wealth, gender, age, and other social differences will affect the kinds of resources which people can (or cannot) access and shape the pathways which people are able to pursue to secure access.
The above two factors have been touched on in this study, but there is substantial room for further exploration.
While issues of access vary greatly, a unifying theme that runs through this analysis is the centrality of institutions. Attention to institutions provides a way of thinking across contexts. We have seen how, in each case study, institutions work to shape and mediate access to seeds and PGRs. Which institutions matter does, of course, depend on the context, resource and people in question. Box 2.1 provided a sense of the range of institutions that affect access to seeds and PGRs. More often than not, institutions bearing on local access overlap and exist at multiple levels, ranging from the local, through to the national and international. To understand and strengthen access, therefore, a multi-level focus on institutions is key.
Seeing, not to mention trying to understand, the bigger picture in which seeds and PGRs connect with livelihoods, is not always straightforward. Drawing together the analysis in previous sections, we offer a framework and checklist of questions to facilitate thinking about access to seeds and PGRs and appropriate entry points (Figure 5.1).
Figure 5.1: Strengthening access to seeds and PGRs: a framework to assist informed decisions and actions
In Figure 5.1 we begin with an overarching question (A): How can improved access to seeds and plant genetic resources contribute to strengthening livelihood security and reducing poverty? Following the livelihoods framework we offer a checklist (B) that identifies three areas to be considered to understand issues of access to seeds and PGRs: understanding contexts, locating seeds/PGRs in livelihood systems and, finally, policies and institutions. On the right-hand side of the page, we develop this checklist by offering possible questions that may be asked when considering interventions or entry points to achieve a series of mutually supportive livelihood outcomes. Asked systematically in sequence, responses to these questions help to identify entry points (C) where work on access to seeds and plant genetic resources may be strengthened to achieve a series of mutually supportive livelihood outcomes (D).
Strengthening access to support livelihoods is, however, not a static or linear process. A feedback loop linking outcomes back to possible entry points is used to suggest an iterative process in which the impacts of interventions are assessed against desired outcomes. Given the dynamism of rural livelihoods, a similar feedback loop links entry points back to the checklist and is used to indicate that understanding livelihood systems is important not only in advance of the initiation of an intervention or activity but also throughout the project or programme cycle. Both of these feedback loops, therefore, highlight the need for monitoring and evaluation activities.
The framework above is offered as a way of thinking broadly about access to seeds and PGRs. It is by no means rigid and the intention is that it will serve as a springboard to assist ways of thinking about and working on issues of access to seeds and PGRs. Consequently, it is very much open to modification, adaptation and further development according to the conditions and challenges of particular contexts.
The examples of possible entry points (C) emerging from an SL approach look considerably different from more standard interventions that focus on provision, production and conservation. This is not to negate the importance of these activities, but instead to suggest ways in which they may be strengthened by taking account of the wider livelihood context. For example, we have noted that work being done in the Technical Cooperation Department of the FAO seeks, where possible, to inform emergency relief efforts using livelihoods-based needs assessments and seed system security assessments.
The SL focus on institutions, however, also identifies entry points that have typically not been within the frame of action. In each case study, though especially in Case 1 and Case 3, an SL perspective highlights the importance of social networks and institutions around seeds and PGRs. Strengthening these networks and institutions is therefore crucial to improve access to seeds and PGRs, particularly for the resource-poor. Activities that support these networks, such as participatory approaches to agricultural research and development, are crucial in this regard. This may also involve modifying or changing existing capacity or infrastructure - for example, improving genebank support to post-conflict and post-disaster agriculture (see Richards and Ruivenkamp, 1997).
In many ways then a livelihoods approach offers a different way of thinking about seeds and PGRs that is, nonetheless, compatible with other approaches. To reiterate this is characterised by, among other things:
Starting with locally defined problems, but tracing upwards and outwards and identifying key connections with broader institutions, policies and processes.
Entry points that are focused on livelihood challenges as identified by poorer farmers; these may be both micro and macro and cut across sectors.
Interventions which combine the technical with the social-legal-political.
A socially differentiated focus on access to resources not just their overall availability or technical efficacy.
A multi-sited and multi-disciplinary approach to analysis and programming.
Organizational responses from implementing agencies and governments that address the challenge of thinking and working in a livelihoods oriented way.
While this study has suggested broadly where and how and livelihoods perspective may inform work on seeds and PGRs, there is clearly need for further work in this area. We identify here several ways in which this work may be taken forward.
1. Given that issues of access to seeds and PGRs differ greatly across contexts, we based our analysis around three case study areas to suggest the ways in which an SL approach could inform understanding of issues of access. Each case - Emergency Relief, Access to Wild and Weedy Foods and Farmer Engagement with Agricultural Research Systems - represents a vast area in which work is occurring. Further focus is needed. Therefore:
Using analysis grounded in concrete activities going on in the field, further develop work to look at ways of strengthening access to seeds and/or PGRs in the context of emergency relief, access to wild and weedy foods and farmer engagement with agricultural research systems.
2. In selecting three case study areas, we necessarily excluded many other potential areas that could also benefit from an SL perspective. Therefore:
Extend the range of areas or cases where an SL perspective may be used, drawing on field-based activities.
3. Throughout this study we have emphasised the centrality of institutions and highlighted how institutions, operating at multiple levels, work to shape local access to resources, including seeds and PGRs. While a SL approach is always locally-grounded (see above), this need not mean that it must be locally-focused. Yet, making these links in practice often proves elusive and thinking often remains dichotomised around ‘local’ vs. ‘global’ without due consideration given to the ways in which they are linked. Therefore:
Develop practical methods to better understand multi-level institutional dynamics and their implications for local access by socially differentiated groups of people.
Looking at seeds and plant genetic resources using a livelihoods perspective directs focus on the many ways in which they contribute to dynamic livelihood systems and exposes a range of complex, and often neglected, access issues. Focused work to strengthen access to seeds and PGRs requires locating these resources within the broader context of livelihood systems and attention to the multiple and multi-scale institutions that mediate access. Institutional complexity that is local, but also, ever more global, presents substantial and sometimes entirely new challenges for securing local access to seeds and PGRs and for achieving goals of food and livelihood security and sustainability. Meeting these challenges and improving access to these resources calls for the development of new kinds of thought and practice to better understand how seeds and PGRs are located within livelihood systems and to enable locally grounded work that spans institutional scales. It is hoped that this study will contribute to efforts to activate such a process.
