Social Sustainability
Rural Livelihoods
Definition
Rural livelihoods comprise the capabilities, assets (natural, physical, human, financial and social capital) and activities through which rural households make their living — typically combining farming with off-farm work, remittances and common-pool resources. The sustainable livelihoods framework, developed by DFID and partners in the 1990s, analyses how policies, shocks and seasonality shape these portfolios, and defines a livelihood as sustainable when it can cope with and recover from stress while maintaining its asset base.
References
Overview
How it is used
The concept structures rural development programming, poverty analysis, climate adaptation planning for agricultural communities, and impact assessment of land and conservation interventions.
Why it matters
Most of the world's poor are rural; livelihood analysis is the discipline of designing interventions that fit how rural people actually live.