Not [to be] sleepy

Livelihoods perspectives represent an important way in which to examine complex rural development questions, such as those related to aquaculture’s actual and potential impact on poverty and the institutions required for pro- poor aquaculture development. Amongst other things livelihoods perspectives allow a holistic understanding of poverty to be used, incorporating more than the conventional income and consumption based approaches found in much of the aquaculture and poverty literature. Perceptions about poverty have changed over the past decades to more multidimensional understandings, focusing on aspects of poverty that are important to poor people themselves. Apart from low income, poverty can include food insecurity, social inferiority and exclusion, lack of assets and vulnerability (La Rovere and Dixon, 2007). Well-being is an important concept for understanding poverty and refers to quality of life which includes the full spectrum of human experience: social, mental, spiritual and material. Each individual may define well-being differently and Chambers (1997) argues that well-being for all is the objective of development. Two basic components of well-being are secure livelihoods to meet basic needs, and realising and expanding one’s capabilities to achieve fulfilment (Sen, 1981, 1993; Chambers, 1997; Kerr and Kolavalli, 1999). Findings of the World Bank’s participatory poverty assessments in different countries indicate that poor people consider poverty as ill-being, in terms of factors such as vulnerability, physical and social isolation, lack of security, lack of self- respect, powerlessness and lack of dignity (Kerr and Kolavalli, 1999; Narayan et al., 2000; World Bank, 2002). Vulnerability, which is related to risk, is an important concept in understanding poverty. People are vulnerable to poverty when they face risks at different levels. At the household level this could be illness, at the community or wider level risk could be related to weather, and at the national level risks could be related to policy changes affecting costs of inputs or outputs. Concepts such as vulnerability, social exclusion and empowerment are all part of this multidimensional view of poverty and should be kept in mind when assessing impacts of policies, technology change and development interventions on poverty alleviation.

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This broader understanding of poverty has contributed to the emergence of ‘livelihoods’ as a way of conceptualising the multiple economic activities poor people undertake, defined as ‘the capabilities, assets (both material and social resources), and activities required for a means of living’ (DfID, 1999). A livelihood is sustainable when ‘it can cope with and recover from stresses and shocks and maintain or enhance its capabilities and assets both now and in the future, while not undermining the natural resource base’ (DfID, 1999) (this definition is based on a paper by Chambers and Conway in 1992). The Sustainable Livelihoods Framework (SLF) (Carney, 1998) has been widely used for over a decade to analyse the causes of poverty, peoples’ access to resources and their diverse livelihoods activities, strategies and outcomes.

There are a number of sustainable livelihoods frameworks that take an asset/vulnerability approach to the analysis of poor people’s livelihoods. The DfID SLF identifies five types of assets or capitals (human, social, natural, physical and financial capital) which are influenced by a particular vulnerability context, including trends, shocks and seasonality. The framework also includes a set of policies, institutions and processes that influence and are influenced by people’s livelihood strategies. Based on the interactions between these elements, the framework defines a set of livelihood outcomes or poverty indicators which go beyond simple income and consumption measures as noted above (Kanji et al., 2005).

Scoones (2009) has noted that livelihoods perspectives are less prominent now than a decade ago. He suggests that failure of these perspectives to engage with more macro processes of economic globalisation, politics and governance debates, environmental sustainability and climate change, and fundamental transformatory shifts in rural economies and wider agrarian change has resulted in a refocusing of research and policy from more contextual livelihood perspectives, often back to macroeconomic analyses. In order to address these failures and be responsive to new contexts, Scoones (2009) sees the need for livelihoods perspectives to focus more explicitly on concerns of knowledge, politics, scale and dynamics. Dorward et al. (2003)

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also highlight an important weakness in the original SLF arguing that it lacks emphasis on markets and their role in livelihood development. Considering the importance of markets to livelihoods, their frequent failure to serve poor people’s interests, and the dependence of livelihood development on demand for livelihood outputs, this gap could lead to failure to identify and act on livelihood opportunities and constraints arising from critical market processes that are important for pro-poor market development. Their approach is informed by the linkages between processes of livelihood change and market access, and wider processes of growth whereby production, consumption and other linkages allow increased production or market opportunity to feed back into increased demand for labour and locally produced goods and services producing a multiplier effect (as discussed in Sections 2.3.4 and 2.3.5 above). These linkages are overlooked by the traditional SLF.

Their modified SLF approach is also influenced by New Institutional Economic (NIE) theory which: highlights the role of institutional development in livelihood enhancement and economic growth, viewing markets as one type of institution for economic coordination and exchange; enables analysis of the institutional causes and effects of vulnerability; emphasises development of institutional arrangements; and provides a framework for investigating the institutional requirements and context of technological change. The modified SLF of Dorward et al. (2003), shown in Figure 3, therefore enables a clearer understanding of the markets and activities that will have wider positive impacts on poor people’s livelihoods and opportunities.

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Figure 3: Modified Sustainable Livelihoods Framework

Source: Dorward et al. (2003:327)

As mentioned above, within the SLF people operate within a context of vulnerability to sudden shocks in the physical environment (drought, flood, or typhoons), or longer term trends in the economic environment or resources, which can reduce household assets.

The five assets which form the basis of people’s livelihoods are:

- Natural capital e.g. land, water, forests, marine resources, air quality, erosion protection, and biodiversity

- Physical capital e.g. transportation, roads, buildings, shelter, water supply and sanitation, energy, technology, and communication

- Financial capital e.g. as savings (cash and liquid assets), credit (formal and informal), and inflows (state transfers and remittances) - Human capital e.g. as education, skills, knowledge, health, nutrition,

and labour power

- Social capital which includes any networks that increase trust, ability to work together, access to opportunities, reciprocity; informal safety nets; and membership in organisations.

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The effects of policies and institutions on institutional interactions between assets, activities, outputs and outcomes are emphasised along with interactions between access, markets, power, rights and services. Policies and institutions may affect access to any livelihood component (e.g. access to demand, different assets, benefits from livelihoods and technologies). This framework can also analyse effects of power, processes and incentives for institutional and technical change; and reasons for, and effects of, current institutional arrangements. Livelihood assets interact with the vulnerability context and policies and institutions, which also interact with each other, affecting all livelihood components.

Livelihood strategies develop in response to people’s asset situation, the vulnerability context, and prevailing policies and institutions. Strategies consist of activities which utilise inputs (including assets) to produce outputs, e.g. migration, off-farm or urban employment, crop diversification or intensification, often combining farm and nonfarm activities. Technology’s role in changing input: output (or asset: output) relations is important. Demand for livelihood outputs is critical for livelihood development and the extent and nature of this demand is central to determining immediate and longer term impacts and sustainability of livelihood activities. Demand must be effective and can be: mediated through markets or other institutional mechanisms; embedded in the local or wider economy resulting in different linkage characteristics; and affected by livelihood outcomes.

Livelihood outcomes are the types of poverty impacts that are of interest in this thesis, both traditional indicators such as income and food security, and broader outcomes such as strengthened asset base and reduced vulnerability which all feed back into the vulnerability status and future asset base. Changes in other factors affecting livelihoods such as institutional structures or processes, the resilience or vulnerability of households and livelihood strategies are also important using a livelihoods framework to assess aquaculture’s impact on poverty.

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The modified SLF framework of Dorward et al. (2003), with its emphasis on markets and institutions, facilitates the linking of micro and macro processes more explicitly than the original SLF and so address some of the concerns of Scoones (2009) mentioned above. Scoones argues that one of the shortcomings of livelihoods approaches has been the failure to address wider, global processes such as globalisation and their effect on livelihoods at the local level. However with an emphasis on markets, economic linkages and broader processes of growth, the modified SLF goes some way to addressing this concern. The modified SLF’s focus on markets as one type of institution, and the importance placed on other institutional arrangements between actors and the institutional and policy environment at district, national and sometimes even international levels, also speaks to this concern of scale. Another shortcoming that Scoones identifies is the lack of attention placed on power and politics. The modified SLF places the role of institutions more centrally than the original SLF. Peoples’ access to assets is mediated by institutions and social relations, which are in turn mediated by power relations. The importance placed on institutional and governance arrangements in the modified SLF thus also highlights the key relationships between livelihoods, power and politics.

Finally, including effective demand (from the local or wider economy) and markets within the modified SLF reflects the importance of linkages between processes of livelihood change, market access, and wider growth processes. Analysing linkages gives important insights into the indirect impacts of growth in one sector on different elements of the rural economy and local economic growth. To understand aquaculture’s indirect effects on pro-poor economic growth the nature and importance of linkages arising from different types of aquaculture development must be understood. As already noted, there is limited literature on aquaculture linkages, but the large theoretical and empirical literature assessing farm nonfarm/RNFE linkages within developing country rural economies (reviews include: Delgado et al., 1998; Haggblade et al., 2007a and 2007b) introduced above in Section 2.3.4, can be used to conceptualise the range of linkages arising from aquaculture and their potential importance for pro-poor economic growth.

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