Sustainable Livelihoods Approach
The Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA) has its origins in studies concerned with understanding the differential capability of rural families to cope with crises such as droughts, floods, or plant and animal pests and diseases (Allison 2005). The approach also borrows ideas from ecological literature concerned with the sustainability of ecosystems, or agro-ecological systems (Holling 1973, Conway 1985; 1987). Here, sustainability is defined as “the ability of a system to maintain productivity in spite of a major disturbance, such as is caused by intensive stress or a large perturbation” (Conway 1985). The concept of resilience and sensitivity as livelihood attributes, also originates in this context (Bayliss-Smith 1991). Resilience refers to the ability of an ecological or livelihood system to “bounce back” from stress
or shocks, while sensitivity refers to the magnitude of a system’s response to an external disturbance (Allison 2005). It follows from these ideas that the most robust livelihood system is one displaying high resilience and low sensitivity, while the most vulnerable displays low resilience and high sensitivity (ibid). The concept of ‘a livelihood’ seeks to bring together the critical factors that affect the vulnerability or strength of individual or family survival strategies. These are thought to comprise, chiefly, the assets possessed by people, the activities in which they engage in order to generate an adequate standard of living and to satisfy other goals such as risk reduction, and the factors that facilitate or inhibit different
people from gaining access to assets and activities. These considerations lead to the following definition of livelihood by Ellis (Ellis 2000; p.10):