Sustainable Livlihoods ToolboxContents:Policy, Institutions and ProcessesPower Tools for Policies and InstitutionsProgramme Identification and DesignGender AnalysisPlanning New ProjectsReviewing Existing ActivitiesMonitoring and EvaluationWays of WorkingSharing the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach

Pound, B., S. Snapp, C. McDougall and A. Braun (Eds). 2003. Managing Natural Resources for Sustainable Livelihoods: Uniting Science and Participation. Earthscan/IDRC.Management of local resources has a greater chance of a sustainable outcome when there is partnership between local people and external agencies, and agendas relevant to their aspirations and circumstances. Managing Natural Resources for Sustainable Livelihoods analyses and extends this premise to show unequivocally that the process of research for improving natural resource management must incorporate participatory and user-focused approaches, leading to development based on the needs and knowledge of local resource users.Drawing on extensive and highly relevant case studies, this book presents innovative approaches for establishing and sustaining participation and collective decision-making, good practice for research, and challenges for future developments. It covers a wide range of natural resources – including forests and soils, and water and management units such as watersheds and common property areas and provides practical lessons from analysis and meta-analysis of cases from Asia, Africa and Latin America. It offers insights on how to make research participatory while maintaining rigour and high-quality biological science, different forms of participation, and ways to scale up and extend participatory approaches and successful initiatives.This book will be invaluable for those professionally involved in natural resource management for sustainable development, and an essential resource for teachers and students of both the biophysical and social science aspects of natural resource management.

Gündel, S. 1998. Innovación, desarrollo y difusión participativas: Adopción y adaptación de leguminosas introducidas en el sistema agrícola tradicional de rozatumba y quema en Yucatán, México. Begleitprogramm Tropenökologie, GTZ, Eschborn, Germany.

Verma, R. 2001. Gender, land and livelihoods in East Africa: Through Farmers' Eyes. IDRC. ISBN 0-88936-929-1 280 pp.In rural Africa and the Middle East, many ecosystems are on the verge of collapse. The interplay of social, ecological, and political-economic forces has compromised the ability of farmers to sustain their precious soil. As a result, farmers, and especially women farmers, face a constant daily struggle to survive.This book illustrates in rich detail the complexity and diversity of women’s lives in Maragoli, western Kenya, as they work to sustain their soils and negotiate a plethora of competing demands and constraints in an increasingly stressful economic environment. With extensive use of personal narratives and photographs from the farmers of Maragoli, this book demonstrates that soil degradation is not simply a function of population pressure and ignorance; rather, it is embedded in gender relations and complex struggles at the local level.

Thiele G; Braun A; Edson Gandarillas E. 2005. Farmer field schools and local agricultural research committees as complementary platforms: New Challenges and opportunities. In: Gonsalves J; Becker T; Braun A; Campilan D; De Chavez H; Fajber E; Kapirini M; Rivaca-Caminade J; Vernooy R (ed) Participatory Research and Development for Sustainable Agricultural and Natural Resource Management: A sourcebook. Volume 3: Doing Participatory Research and Development. International Potato Center - User's Perspectives with Agricultural Research and Development (CIP- UPWARD), Laguna, The Philippines and International Development Research (IDRC), Ottawa, Canada.

Adato, M. and R. Meinzen-Dick. 2002. Assessing The Impact Of Agricultural Research On Poverty Using The Sustainable Livelihoods Framework. EPTD Discussion Paper 89. Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute.

AN OVERVIEW OF PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH AND LEARNING PROCESSES AND THEIR RELEVANCE TO WATERSHED MANAGEMENT AND DEVELOPMENT CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food. 2003. An overview of participatory research and learning processes and their relevance to watershed management and development. Paper commissioned to the working group on Participatory Natural Resource Management of CGIAR System wide Program on Participatory Research and Gender Analysis. 30 p.

Vaughan, K. and Katjiua, J. 2002. An Overview of Community-based Natural Resource Management and Rural Livelihoods in ≠Khoadi //Hoas Conservancy. Kunene. WILD Working Paper 5.Peoples’ livelihoods within the ≠Khoadi //Hoas conservancy area comprise a dynamic mix of using and accessing a variety of resources and dealing with complex and diverse transforming processes (for example, different kinds of localised power relationships, rules, and institutions and the effects of national policy and legislation) People are critically dependant on the natural resource base, with drought being seen as the major influence on vulnerability. Water and grazing are the most critical assets and are directly related to livestock keeping activities. The importance of these assets varies depending on people’s primary livelihood strategies and their location within the conservancy. Some people live in population centres and can therefore be considered more urban based, and reliant on formal employment. Others live in the more rural areas and rely primarily on livestock farming. The numbers and types of stock owned differentiate people. Wildlife utilisation ranging from insects to small mammals plays a critical role in sustaining livelihoods, with some types of wildlife being seen as beneficial whilst others cause conflict with existing livelihood activities (for example predators killing livestock).The impacts of the conservancy programme on household livelihoods are both positive and negative with costs and benefits associated with impacts. Whilst the broader community appears to support the conservancy initiative the majority see little if any direct benefits and are in some instances still incurring costs associated with living with wildlife such as predator and elephant threats and damage. The community has so far seen limited and few tangible and direct benefits. At present those benefiting most are either directly employed through the conservancy, or are closely linked to conservancy employees and committee members. Greater levels of localised control on illegal hunting activities may have reduced hunting or made hunters change their behaviour away from commercial to more subsistence forms of hunting. Poorer and marginal households who have traditionally relied on wildlife utilisation to secure their household livelihoods especially in times of vulnerability and stress may have been unduly or adversely affected.

Matsaert, H., Z. Ahmed, N.Islam and F.Hussain. 2004. Actor oriented tools for analysis of innovation systems: Some guidelines from experience of analysing natural resource based innovation systems in Bangladesh. DRAFT.These guidelines are based on our experiences of using actor oriented tools to analyse chilli and livestock innovations systems and identify pro poor interventions in the char lands of Bangladesh, and in sharing and discussing these tools with other development partners. These tools are drawn from a wide range of sources. These include social anthropological and social network research techniques (see Long and Long 1992, Lewis 1998), stakeholder analysis (see Grimble and Wellard 1997), agricultural information knowledge systems (see Roling and Jiggins 1997) and process monitoring and documentation (see Mosse et al 1998). However, the tools are not commonly found in the analysis and planning of interventions in natural resource based innovation systems. Actor oriented tools complement other planning, monitoring and evaluation tools by focusing on the structure of social relationships between the key actors involved in a development scenario. We have found them useful for:- Analysis of a given institution (e.g organisation or enterprise, project or sector) in terms of strong and weak linkages between its actors; planning: visual presentation of critical links which should be supported or developed to meet the overall development goals e.g poverty reduction, inclusion of marginal groups and in monitoring and evaluation for visualising how interventions have impacted on critical linkages over time.

Vaughan, K., Kuvare, U., Long, S.A. and Murphy, C. 2002. The Khaibasen Participatory Research Group Livelihoods Workshop Report, 3rd to 8th December 2001. Grootberg multi-purpose training centre ≠Khoadi //Hoas Conservancy. Kunene. WILD Working Paper Series 2.As part of the WILD project’s first phase of field research, a participatory research workshop was held with community and conservancy members from the ≠Khoadi /Hoas conservancy. This report provides details on the findings of the PRA workshop. The workshop was held at the Grootberg MET Multipurpose Training Center between the 3 and 8 December 2001. The findings of this workshop aim to inform the further development of household-level research focused on the impacts of changing Natural Resources (NR) use and management for The purpose of the workshop was to conduct a livelihoods PRA with community and conservancy members to provide an understanding of local livelihood priorities in the context of changing natural resource use and management practice (including an understanding of existing institutional arrangements to support various aspects of peoples’ livelihoods). Additionally, the workshop aimed to establish and develop the PLA research-working group for ≠Khoadi /Hoas community and implement the first phase of the community-level livelihood research activities.

Vaughan, C., Katjiua, J.B. and Branston, N. 2003. Talking with Torra. Proceedings of a Participatory Livelihoods Workshop with Torra Residents. WILD Working Paper 17.People employ a highly diverse mix of livelihood assets and livelihood strategies depending on access. The majority of Torra resident’s have a primary dependence on the natural resource base and livestock farming to achieve their livelihood outcomes. Thus, people do not follow one singular activity but apply a mix of assets, resources and strategies to achieve livelihood outcomes.2. Participants reported 17 factors that made their livelihoods vulnerable and affected security. Other than sudden death or severe illness the next top factors were associated with drought, stock theft and predator damage to stock and livestock illness. They questioned whether the conservancy could not play an increasing role in supporting their livestock systems, including support for marketing and disease outbreaks and reducing predator damage.3. For livelihood problems participants identified 22 factors. The top five issues relate to a lack of employment and training opportunities, and access to cash income and financial support. A number of the key problems, e.g. lack of employment and financial income, are key priorities for Torra Conservancy Committee (TCC), while others fall outside the scope of their remit and capacity.4. Participants identified a variety of policies, institutions and processes affecting livelihood outcomes – both formal rules and regulations, and social norms or informal rules of the community. Participants stated it was unclear at times who was responsible for what, e.g. conservancy and elephants. A businessman who had applied for a Permission to Occupy (PTO) from the Traditional Authority, but had been refused by the conservancy gave another example. Participants stated the conservancy should provide information to clarify conservancies’ roles, responsibilities and actual jurisdiction and develop local conservancy policies with the community.5. Participants identified positive (good) and negative (bad) changes or impacts resulting from conservancy development interventions. The Conservancy Committee need to review further the costs and benefits of the conservancy and incorporate the findings into management plans.6. Participants identified over 25 potential community development options. The variety of options identified shows the community has a wealth of potential ideas about how Torra could spend its money. These options could be consolidated to a top ten (building on visioning work) and tabled at a series of special meetings, fed into the development of TCC action plans for benefit distribution and community development planning.7. Participants identified over 22 critical factors affecting a conservancy’s success. Topics included conflict within the community, lack of information, lack of clarity on decisionmaking and no financial support to members. TCC should review these factors together with the options for a successful conservancy process (below) to ensure strong community support.8. Participants developed options for a successful conservancy process. Top options centred on community involvement in decision-making and awareness of conservancy activities including transport for meetings, farm visits and transparency in management decisions. The conservancy and community need to identify ways to support conservancy successes by reviewing identified options.

ETC-RUAF and SIUPA. 2001. Proceedings of the expert workshop on Appropriate Methodologies for Urban Agriculture: Research, Policy development, Planning, Implementation and Evaluation. 1-5 Oct, 2001. Nairobi, Kenya. ETC Resource Centre on Urban Agriculture and Forestry, Leusden, the Netherlands and CGIAR Strategic Initiative on Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture SIUPA, Lima, Peru.Urban agriculture is an ancient practice but a recent focus of attention for a wide range of professionals associated with urban management, urban planning and agriculture. In the past these fields have been quite separate, and have elaborated their own approaches and methods associated with policy development, planning, research and monitoring and evaluation. The organisers of the workshop believe that to strengthen and develop agriculture in the urban environment, there is a pressing need not only to explore the adaptation of the wide range of methods used in rural agricultural research and development, but also to provide an innovative integration of these procedures with the specifically urban methods applied to understanding planning and policy issues. In order to stimulate such a process CGIAR-SIUPA and ETC-RUAF decided to jointly organise a multi media process of collection, discussion and synthesis of a set of appropriate methods for urban agriculture research, policy developoment, planning, implementation and evaluation. We started with a brain-storming meeting (in Leusden, the Netherlands )with a small group invited resource persons. As a result six thematic areas were chosen through which to identify and debate appropriate methods for urban agriculture. These themes, which are elaborated in more detail below, are: • Situation analysis/diagnosis and baseline studies on UA • Participatory UA policy formulation and action planning • Integration of UA in urban land use planning • Participatory technology development in UA • Marketing assessments and micro-enterprise development related to UA • Monitoring and evaluation of the impacts of UA As a next step we invited experts on each of these themes to prepare a synthesis paper. The topic coordinators identified interesting experiences, commissioned the preparation of case study papers and synthesized current methodological experiences. The synthesis papers were used as the basis for the discussions during the expert consultation held in Nairobi in October 2001, on which we report in this document. The objective of the workshop was: to bring together, exchange and discuss experiences gained with a variety of methodologies applied in intra-urban and peri-urban agriculture (UA)1 research, policy development, spatial urban planning, project planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.

Gündel, S. 1998. Participatory Innovation Development and Diffusion: Adoption and adaption of introduced legumes in the traditional slash-and-burn peasant farming system in Yucatan, Mexico. Begleitprogramm Tropenökologie, GTZ, Eschborn, Germany.

Vaughan, C., Katjiua, J.B., Mulonga, S., and Branston N. 2003. Living with Wildlife. Proceedings of Workshop to Evaluate Wildlife Utilization and Human Wildlife Conflict with Community Game Guards in Kunene. WILD Working Paper 16.This paper presents a preliminary analysis of research conducted in the Kunene Region on the role of wildlife use and management for livelihoods. There are two main components to the paper. The first presents a discussion of issues and options arising from research, drawing on a participatory workshop dealing with issues associated with ‘living with wildlife’, Other data that this paper draws on includes material from the main WILD/EEU CBNRM livelihood survey, two further participatory research workshops (Vaughan et al 2002, and Vaughan and Katjiua 2003), informal interviews and household visits and work in progress on wildlife use (Katjiua forthcoming). The second part presents the proceedings of the workshop to discuss project findings verbatim. The workshop gathered together 18 Community Game Guards (CGGs) from different conservancies in Kunene, three MET representatives, three NGO facilitators and four WILD Project researchers, to explore in more detail some of the issues raised through previous research. The workshop focused on gaining a balanced picture and broader understating of the relationship between the management of wildlife through conservancies and local people’s own use, the role wildlife plays in people’s lives and the pressures or conflicts they face.

Meinzen-Dick, R., A. Knox, F. Place, and B. Swallow (Eds.) 2002. Innovation in Natural Resource Management The Role of Property Rights and Collective Action in Developing Countries. John Hopkins. University Press.International agricultural research is expanding beyond the development of annual crop technologies for individual farms to the development of longer-term natural resource management techniques for entire landscapes. But technologies or practices with a long lag time between investment and returns are unlikely to be adopted by farmers unless they have secure rights to the underlying resources (property rights). Similarly, technologies that span multiple farms are unlikely to be adopted unless neighbors and groups work together (collective action). But little is known about the way property rights and collective action in developing countries mediate the adoption of technologies by farmers and groups. To address this information gap, this volume brings together international experts in economics, sociology, and natural resource management to examine the links among property rights, collective action, and technological change for a variety of technologies across a range of community contexts in the developing world. Authors focus on the reciprocal relationships between community institutions and technologies, the role of property rights in conflicts between crop and livestock production systems, and the way that collective action differs across landscapes. A conceptual framework, methodological approaches, and "best bet" practices are presented to help guide future research.Researchers, policy analysts, and students interested in the links between environmental sustainability, economic growth, equity and poverty alleviation, and technology adoption will benefit from this volume.

Long, S.A., Murphy, C. and Vaughan, K. 2001. An Overview of Project Approach, Concepts and Methods. Windhoek, Namibia. WILD Working Paper 1.This document provides an overview of the Wildlife Integration for Livelihood Diversification (WILD) project in terms of aims and objectives; key concepts, framework and questions for the research and analysis; Methods; and outputs. It is aimed at a wide audience, from regional Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET) and Non Government Organisations (NGO) staff in the field to members of the Project Steering Committee and other stakeholders based in Windhoek. It is organised around a simple overview of the project in terms of both concept and practice.The WILD Project operates as an applied, participatory research project that is development oriented. It addresses the following key questions:1. What are the implications for livelihoods of changing NRM activities and options within conservancies?2. Which critical factors affect these and how?3. Who within communities is affected and in what ways?Central to the research will be an analysis of livelihoods (current practice in the context of changing approaches to natural resource use and management). A comprehensive livelihoods analysis will include consideration of a range of critical factors including local institutional and political contexts, the interventions of service providers, policy and legislation, prices and markets etc. While many factors have shaped the livelihoods of communal area residents in different ways, perhaps the single most important change with respect to the natural resource use and management practices has come about through the implementation of a national programme of support to Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM). This programme concentrates on the development of conservancies as a means to achieving strong institutions for natural resource management and developing opportunities for communities to benefit from (among other things) tourism (consumptive and non-consumptive).