Assessing development interventions: actor oriented and livelihood approaches

RODRÍGUEZ BILELLA, PABLO; TAPELLA, ESTEBAN

Federico Caffè Centre Research Report

Roskilde University

Lugar: Roskilde, Dinamarca; Año: 2008 vol. 5 p. 3 - 14

1396-5085

This paper introduces the relevance and importance of adopting actor-oriented perspectives to overcome some of the shortcomings of development environmental interventions. These interventions have usually adopted ‘deterministic’ assumptions that not always fit into the local context, accompany stakeholders’ strategies or respond to households trajectories. One of these actor-oriented perspectives has been the sustainable livelihood approach, which has lately become an important organizing framework and focus of extensive research for the development efforts of a wide range of multilateral agencies, donors, NGOs and government bodies. This approach puts poor people and their priorities at the centre, being an alternative and holistic way of looking at, and understanding the way by which different rural households develop. More specifically, it attends the way rural families respond to global change and structural conditions (natural, social and cultural ones) by reallocating land, labor and capital resources. This approach could also become a useful tool for the generation of a common language within interdisciplinary teams of researchers that work on the same field from different backgrounds and experiences. The paper begins stating some of the complexities in assessing sustainable development interventions, and showing the usefulness of adopting a situated definition of sustainability. Then, the main characteristics of the sustainable livelihood approach in the framework of globalization are introduced. In this section a general overview of the livelihood approach is developed, opting for a clear and unified presentation, letting the interested reader to consult the minor differences among agencies and scholars about this approach. In the last section, the principal advantages  of adopting this approach are stated.