Sustainable Fishery Livelihoods

Sustainable livelihoods (SL) is a way of thinking about the objectives, scope and priorities for development in order to enhance progress in poverty elimination. It is a holistic approach that tries to capture, and provide, a means of understanding the vital causes and dimensions of poverty without collapsing the focus onto just a few factors (economic issues, food security, etc.). It also tries to sketch out the relationships between the different aspects (causes, manifestations) of poverty, allowing for more effective prioritization of action at an operational level.

 

The SL approach (or approaches - given that there is no set way of doing things) aims to help people achieve lasting livelihood improvements measured using poverty indicators that they, themselves, define. This, in turn helps to combat exclusion. It is people-centred. It recognises that people have certain rights but also certain responsibilities to each other and to society more generally. It recognizes the enormous diversity amongst the 1.3 billion extremely poor people in the world, and stresses the strengths of these people. If we want to make a difference we must build on these strengths, helping people to move in the directions that they want to move.

 

SL approaches rest on core principles that prioritise people-centred, responsive, and multi-level approaches to development. These are backed up with a set of tools, including the SL framework developed by the British Department for International Development (DFID).