Promoting Sustainable Livelihoods in the Free State

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Promoting Sustainable Livelihoods in the Free
State

• Dr. Tankiso Dikibo
• African Institute for Community-Driven
  Development
• (formerly Khanya-managing rural change)

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Summary

• Goal
• Poverty Definition
• Approach
• Creating wealth
• Sustainable Livelihood Framework
• Principles of SLA
• Areas of intervention to improve livelihoods
• Implications for Free State

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Introduction

• The goal of the provincial government of the Free
  State is to reduce poverty from 63 of the
  population to 45 by 2010 and 30 by 2020. A
  number of strategies have been put in place to
  achieve this. This paper aims at assisting the
  provincial government to meet the stated goals in
  their poverty reduction strategy, and
  particularly for people in the informal (second)
  economy (around 50 of the population)

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Poverty Definition and Sustainable Livelihoods

• Traditionally poverty is assessed against income
  or consumption criteria, eg per capita income of
  1 per day
• A person is poor only if his/her income level is
  below defined poverty line, or if consumption
  falls below a stipulated minimum
• But the poor people also include a sense of
  insecurity or vulnerability lack of a sense of
  voice vis-à-vis other members of their household,
  community or government low levels of health,
  literacy, education, and access to assets, many
  of which are influenced by the scope and quality
  of service delivery.

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Poverty Definition cont..

• This paper argues that reduction of poverty can
  be enhanced through the application of the
  sustainable livelihoods approach which seeks to
  address two broad issues
• Increasing the assets of people
• reducing their vulnerability to stresses and
  shocks
• Improving the policy and service environment
  which will enable peoples assets to increase and
  vulnerability to reduce

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Approach

• AICDDs understanding of the processes for wealth
  creation and the ingredients thereof are grounded
  in our understanding of poverty and how
  sustainable livelihoods can be achieved. This is
  closely linked to the approach now being
  advocated by the President of a focus on the
  informal second economy.
• It is also founded on the well-established
  international experience that a trickle-down
  approach to wealth creation will not work we
  must find a way to empower people at the bottom
  to survive and thrive as well as promoting growth
  more generally

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What is a livelihood?

• A livelihood comprises the capabilities, assets
  (including both material and social resources)
  and activities required for a means of living.
• 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. (Carney 1998)

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So a livelihood is how people

• survive,
• cope with stresses and shocks, and,
• maintain, and improve their well-being
• now and in the future

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Formal, informal
External environment
Macro Meso Micro
Natural
Vulnerability to stresses and shocks
Opport-unities
Human
Social
Financial
Physical
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Creating Wealth

• So the basis of creating wealth and understanding
  livelihoods is increasing peoples levels of five
  types of assets,
• physical (eg infrastructure, personal and
  public),
• social (eg extended family, CBOs),
• natural (eg access to land, forests etc),
• human (eg lack of disease, nutrition, skills)
• financial (eg savings, social grants, incomes).
• And decreasing their vulnerability

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Creating Wealth cont..

• The growth rate and size of wealth creation and
  livelihoods safeguarded is dependent on the
  enabling environment (governance, policy and
  institutions) in which the poor people exist.
• For many of the 50 they will not become wealthy
  in their lifetime but we can help to ensure
  that they eat well, they can educate their
  children, they can have good health, they can
  feel safe, and their children will move out of
  the poverty trap ie they have a good livelihood

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SLA Principles

• Effective pro-poor development interventions must
  be
• People focused
• Participatory and responsive
• Building on strengths (so they have the power to
  move forward and are not paralysed by the
  problems)
• Holistic
• Based on partnerships
• Sustainable (economic, social environmental, and
  institutional )
• Flexible and dynamic

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Areas of intervention to improve livelihoods

• Economic and employment (financial assets)
• Promoting livelihoods from natural resources,
  through micro business support, eg to the
  informal sector
• importance of land reform in increasing access to
  natural resources
• Social and human
• Human - the critical importance of ABET training,
  empowerment, Safeguarding human health, safety
  and security
• Social - improving social networks which are
  critical for the poor

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Areas of intervention to improve livelihoods

• Infrastructure - physical assets
• the role of improving housing and infrastructure
  for water electricity, transport, waste removal
  etc
• Sustainability
• Protecting the natural resources base (safe
  guarding the natural resources base
• Governance
• Linking communities to local gov, province and
  centre
• Improving services
• Eg CBP in the Free State

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Economic and employment

• Promoting livelihoods from natural resources
• Through land reform (but one which does not force
  artificial farm sizes and groups, but allows
  small farms which can grow organically)
• through micro business support (eg Intsika Yethu
  in E Cape building on community savings through
  community bank)
• Through adding value to agric produce
• Through communities participating in
  community-based natural resource management (eg
  parks note MDTP in Lesotho)
• Through supporting farmworkers staying on farm,
  improving productivity, conditions, skills

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Eg Communities benefiting from Parks (CBNRM)

• interactions between governance (national,
  district, traditional), investment (private
  sector intervention) and community empowerment
  are approached in an integrated manner and used
  to augment what local people already do well with
  the assets to which they have access.
• Building community structures to benefit from
  formal sector opportunities (eg MDTP)
• Using range of linkages eg leasing land
  (Maluleke), community lodges, community owning
  shares (Bafokeng)

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• Getting communities to identify local strengths
  (assets) and opportunities (eg Intsika Yethu)
• Supporting a range of small and informal sector
  businesses
• These are a range of sizes and provide a way into
  the formal sector
• Need tailored support eg training at
  appropriate times
• Need innovative mechanisms eg bulk buying
• (note Mangaung is developing an informal sector
  strategy)
• LED as a process of discovery, building awareness
  of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and
  threats, which needs to be supported by external
  services/tools, which is where municipalities,
  departments have a role to play.
• It involves integrated support across systems and
  stakeholders. It promotes local production, local
  purchasing, adding value to local products,
  labour-based production, and a recognition that
  we need expansion of livelihoods as well as the
  employment and business in the formal sector. .

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Case study 2 Intsika Yethu LED, (EC)

• Communities in Cofimvaba used the SL approach
  to identify, recognise their strengths, and the
  LED strategies they wish to persue. They
  selected savings/credit community bank as one
  their main projects to assist them to access
  money to support the economic development
  projects. Representatives have attended
  savings/credit training - there are ongoing
  discussions with the municipality to take the
  process forward.
• The approach builds on the community and its
  locational strengths, involving communities in
  the identification of opportunities and putting
  the responsibility on them to implement.

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Implications for the Free State

• Expose different department and their staff to
  SLA and livelihoods thinking
• Practitioners can use the SL Framework as an
  analytical tool to understand complex development
  environments, to move towards action on
  eradication of poverty, to respond to the
  challenge of meeting the Millenium Development
  Goals
• to make sure we are addressing the issues of poor
  people, to go beyond thinking of growth to both a
  bottom-up and top-down approach (both first and
  second economies)
• Beyond individual agendas to Private Public
  Partnerships for integrated development
• used in developing Free State Poverty Strategy in
  2000 (first provincial strategy in country and
  used as model for others) but not implemented
• We have applied widely to a range of innovative
  approaches across Africa