The livelihoods approach seeks to improve rural development policy and practice by recognising the seasonal and cyclical complexity of livelihood strategies, helping to remove access constraints to assets and activities that complement existing patterns, and identifying ways of making livelihoods as a whole more able to cope with adverse trends or sudden shocks. A fundamental precept of the approach is that it seeks ‘‘to identify what the poor have rather than what they do not have’’ and ‘‘[to] strengthen people’s own inventive solutions, rather than substitute for, block or undermine them