Sustainable Livelihoods Approaches - Can they transform development?

Abstract

This paper critically examines the sustainable livelihoods approach (SLA) in the context of broader development debates, using a literature review as a tool to explore the origins, concepts and uses of the `approach¿. Whilst the concept of sustainable livelihoods is valuable in advancing our understanding the complexity and embedded nature of people¿s lives, sustainable livelihoods frameworks and principles are too simplistic to offer many answers. This paper argues that the idea of net sustainable livelihoods has much to offer the current discourse on rights and governance but that this is in danger of being diluted by its conceptualisation as a new `approach¿ to managing development interventions.