Sustainable Livelihood approach for assessing community

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Sustainable Livelihood approach for assessing
communitys resilience to climate variability and
change /A case study from Sudan
Second International Conference on Climate
Impacts Assessment (SICCIA) June 28-July 2,
2004Grainau, Germany

• By
• Dr.Balgis Osman Elasha
• PI AIACC-AF 14 Project
• The Higher Council for Environment Natural
  Resources
• (HCENR) Sudan Stockholm Environment Institute
• Boston Center (SEI_B)

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Overview

• Why SL?
• Sustainable livelihood (SL)
• conceptual framework
• Basic definitions
• SL assessment
• Connection to adaptation
• SL and Environmental management measures
• An example from Sudan case studies conducted by
  AIACC AF14 project.

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Why talk about Sustainable Livelihoods?

• Urgent adaptation needs of most vulnerable groups
  
• Existence of local coping strategies
• Hard-won lessons from other (non-climate)
  disciplines (e.g. disaster mitigation, natural
  resource management)
• No-regrets options
• Lack of connection between community needs and
  the policy process

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Basic Definitions
1.Livelihoods are the ways people make a living,
including how they distribute their productive
resources and the types of activities in which
they are engaged

• 2. Sustainable Livelihood
• The Brundtland Commission in 1987Intrdoduced SL
  in terms of resources ownership, access to basic
  needs and livelihood security
• The IISD SL concerned with people's capacities
  to generate maintain their means of living,
  enhance their well- being, and that of future
  generations.
• The definition used by the UK's (DFID) A
  livelihood comprises the capabilities, assets
  activities required for a means of living .

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Basic definitions (Cont.)

• Resilience The capacity of a population to
  adapt to environmental change such as extreme
  climatic events and climate variability.
• Adaptation is the ability to respond and adjust
  to actual or potential impacts of changing
  climate conditions in ways that moderates harm or
  takes advantage of positive opportunities
• Coping Strategies The short-term responses to
  periodic stress, such as the use of famine foods
  in drought.
• Adaptive Strategies Strategies that require
  people to reorganize their livelihood systems in
  response to long-term changes and challenges.
• Security The state of a community that can
  provide safeguards for itself against social,
  economic and environmental change

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Livelihood assessment

• Livelihood assessment is a way of looking at how
  an individual, a household or a community behaves
  under specific frame conditions.
• How to understand livelihood systems?
• Through analysis of the impacts of coping and
  adaptive strategies pursued by individuals and
  communities as a response to external shocks and
  stresses such as drought, civil strife and policy
  failures

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Connection to Adaptation-How?

• The SL approach helps researchers to
• Focus on most vulnerable people
• Assess their vulnerabilities and strengths
• Tap existing knowledge ongoing efforts to
  determine what works
• Enable community-driven strategies and actions
  ensure buy-in and longevity
• Ultimately fortify against future
  climate-related shocks

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What types of measures are we considering?

• SL/Environmental Management Measures (SL/EM)
  like rangelands management, micro-catchments
  restoration, soil management, etc., each of which
  involves an array of specific measures (e.g.,
  water harvesting, intercropping, livestock
  diversification, windbreak construction,
  reforestation

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Sudans Project

• Sudan AIACC Project Environmental Strategies for
  Increasing Human Resilience in Sudan Lessons for
  Climate Change Adaptation in North and East
  African
• Goal
• to prove that certain SL/EM measures increase the
  resilience of communities to climate related
  shocks
• establish that these measures are effective and
  should be considered as climate change adaptation
  options that could be included in the planning of
  national adaptation strategies.
• to explore what enables them to be effective
  i.e., what factors (participatory implementation,
  local governance, macro-economic policies, etc.)
  made it possible for the measures to be
  successful

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How??

• Case Studies were employed to explore example
  where local knowledge (e.g. traditional,
  indigenous autonomous and informal) and/ or
  external knowledge (formal, technical, directed)
  has been applied within a target community in the
  form of SL/NRM strategy to enable the community
  to cope with or adapt to climaterelated stress.
  Each Case study will also provide an assessment
  of the local and national policies and conditions
  that support or inhibit the measures

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Sources of information

• community groups,
• local, regional and international NGOs
• government agencies
• university departments and
• bilateral and multilateral development agencies,

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Pilot Case study

• Pilot case study
• To demonstrate the use of sustainable livelihood
  framework for measuring the adaptive capacity of
  local communities to climate change impacts the
  following pilot case study was being conducted
  under the umbrella of Sudan - AIACC AF14 project
  
• Community-Based Rangeland Rehabilitation for
  Carbon Sequestration and Biodiversity.

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Objectives

• Twofold
• a) to sequester carbon through the implementation
  of a sustainable, local-level natural resources
  management system that prevents degradation,
  rehabilitates or improves rangelands and
• b) to reduce the risks of production failure in
  a drought-prone area by providing alternatives
  for sustainable production, so that out-migration
  will decrease and population will stabilize

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Pilot CS Cont.

• Context Villages in the drought-prone area of
  Western Sudan
• Approach Community-Based Rangeland
  Rehabilitation
• Key Actors Villages within Gireigikh rural
  council, pilot project
• Funding UNDP/GEF

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What happened?

• A group of villages undertook a package of SL
  measures, designed to regenerate and conserve the
  degraded rangelands upon which their community
  depends.
• Community Organization
• Alternative Livestock and Livestock Management
• Rural Energy Management
• Replanting
• Stabilization of sand dunes
• Creation of windbreaks
• Micro-lending for supplemental
• income generation

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What are the outcome of the pilot project
(results from evaluation report)

• Community institutional structure created
• land-use master plans
• oversight and mobilization structures
• Rangeland rehabilitation measures implemented
• 5 km of sand dunes re-vegetated
• 195 km of windbreaks sheltering 130 farms
• Approximately 700 ha improved
• Livestock restocking
• Community development underway
• 2 revolving funds
• 5 pastoral womens groups focused on livestock
  value-adding activities
• 5 new irrigated gardens and wells
• Grain storage and seed credit program

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Primary Assessment tool

• The primary tool employed in this assessment is
  the sustainable livelihood impact assessment
  methods for assessing project impacts on target
  communities.
• Objective To measure the impact of the project
  intervention on the community coping/adaptive
  capacity through the employment of a range of
  data collection methods, a combination of
  quantitative and qualitative indicators.
• Communitys coping and adaptive capacities in the
  face of climatic variability and extremes is used
  as proxy for its level of coping and adaptive
  capacity for future climate change

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Methods used

• Use of DFID SL model and notion of the five
  capitals (natural, physical, human, social and
  financial
• Within the SL framework the project employed the
  Livelihood Assets Tracking (LAST) system to
  measure changes in coping and adaptive capacity.
• Use of word pictures by household to assess
  their own vulnerability ,coping and adaptive
  capacity to a climate-related impact.
• Consultation with communities to develop
  indicators of community resilience and construct
  word pictures.
• Use of stratified sampling methods to ensure
  representation of a range of individuals and
  household circumstances

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Sustainable livelihoods capital assets

• Natural capital
• Financial capital
• Physical capital
• Human capital
• Social capital

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Word pictures

• are descriptions of HH circumstances developed in
  a participatory manner with the community in
  question.
• -Best case
• worse case snapshot.

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Development of indicators

• Two types of indicators were identified
• 1- Short-term indicators include
• - economic - e.g., crop productivity, livestock
  productivity, local grain reserves
• - ecological - e.g., biomass, soil water
  balance and
• Social - e.g., household wealth and dislocation.
• 2- Longer-term resilience indicators which are
  more qualitative, aimed at capturing intangibles
  such as the level of economic, ecological and
  social stability within a system or community

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Preliminary list of generic indicators includes

• Land degradation (slowed or reversed)
• Condition of the vegetation cover (stabilized or
  improved)
• Soil and/or crop productivity (stabilized or
  increased)
• Water supply (stabilized or increased)
• Average income levels (stabilized or increased)
• Food stores (stabilized or increased)
• Out-migration (slowed, stabilized, or reversed)

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Outline of qualitative quantitative indicators
for the SL
Natural Assets Rangeland productivity Rangeland carrying capacity Plant species composition Water sources, quality and use Access to Natural resources by marginal community groups ( women, minority tribes, poor)
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Productivity of Natural Assets

• Average production per unit area of rangeland
• No. of animals per unit area of rangeland Yield
  from main crops
• Production of vegetables and fruits from women
  gardens

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Physical assets

• Management of water wells Maintenance of water
  pumps
• Grain stores (capacity and accessibility)
• Grain mills (capacity and accessibility)
• Energy conservation techniques (improved stoves)
• Effectiveness of management systems applied to
  pasture, water, livestock etcAvailability of
  spare parts

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Financial Assets

• Income generating activities
• Income levels and stability
• Revolving funds /amount of credit granted to
  individuals
• Savings
• Accessibility of vulnerable groups to credit
  (women, poor and Kawahla

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Human (household) Assets

• Ownership of assets
• Skilled labors
• Housing type
• Access of marginal groups to education, training
  and extension services

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Social Assets indicators

• Organizational set-up (local village committees)
• Role of village committees in the decision making
  process.
• Membership to organizations Sharing of
  responsibility

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Access to services

• Extension
• Health
• Education
• Training
• Veterinary services

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Policies and Institutions

• Government institutions and polices in relation
  to
• Taxes
• Market prices
• Incentives
• Land tenure
• Local level institutions
• NGOs

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Risks

• Changing government policies
• Out-migration by skilled people
• Encroachment by other tribes into the project
  area
• Pressures on rangelands by intruding nomads

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Development of criteria and indicators around the
capital assets
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Collecting data with WPs

• Approach to survey/interviews
• Use household circumstances during signal event
  as basis of comparison compare with
  circumstances during recent or hypothetical event
• Use assessment sheets (one for each capital) as
  basis of interview questions. For example
• During the signal event (e.g., 1984 drought),
  what level of food stores did you have (in
  months)? Were they sufficient? If not, how
  great was the deficit (in months)?
• During the recent drought (post-SL activity) ,
  what level of food stores did you have (in
  months)? Were they sufficient? If not, how
  great was the deficit (in months)?
• On assessment sheet, record number associated
  with interviewee responses to questions
• From these responses, assemble word pictures for
  each interview

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Resulting Word Pictures
A word picture of households access to natural
resources (natural capital)
Pre-SL Activity Post-SL Activity
Little or no land one or two month's food available from own land quality of land is poor, having red soil with low fertility land is located on a slope in such a position that rain water washes away the seed sown and the top soil and hence reduces its fertility use of traditional seeds some have given away land as collateral no source of irrigation no land for growing fodder for livestock owns one or two livestock no milk produced low access to forest produce More of black fertile soil more land grows one's own fodder on one's own land fertile land with more moisture retention power more produce from land grows and sells cash crops grows vegetables grows high yielding variety seeds lends seeds to others irrigation facilities available round the year land is near the forest access to forest produce some have government permit to grow opium has many fruit trees availability of home grown food throughout the year many livestock, high returns from livestock
Adapted from Bond and Mukherjee (2002)
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Preparation of a livelihood assets status
framework matrixCASE STUDY ASSESSMENT SHEET
Natural Capital
Best case Moderate Worst case Indicators Criteria
Excellent gt90 rehabilitated 90 Degraded ) Area of improved/ rehabilitated rangelands Productivity Rangelands productivity
gt20 AU/ha/year 15 to 20 AU/ha/year 10 to 15 AU/ha/year 5-10 AU/ha/year AU/ha/year Carrying capacity

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ProductivityNatural capital
Sample of the results in graph form
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Financial Capital
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Human Capital
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Physical Capital
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Social Capital
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Sustainability Natural Capital

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Financial Capital
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Human Capital
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Physical Capital
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Social Capital
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Equity

• Chances of marginalized groups (women, poor,
  kawahla tribe) increased significantly
  particularly with regard to
• access to grazing land
• access to credit
• access to social services
• access to training
• participation in decision-making

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Overall change in the resilience of the five
capitals
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Policies and institutions

• The micro-policies in the project area were
  influenced by the following bodies
• (a) Committees- Sustainability of activities
• (b) NGOs (SECS CARE International)-Awareness
• (C) Traditional leaders The Traditional
  administration played major role in natural
  resources management for very long period in
  different parts of Sudan particularly in
  traditional areas (Social security , Nafir etc..)

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Conclusions

• Tapping the SL Approach What can it do for
  adaptation?
• Using this as a tool in adaptation assessment can
  help to
• Enable national planning processes to effectively
  consider the most vulnerable groups articulate
  unique local vulnerabilities
• Identify locally-relevant resilience-building
  options
• Build understanding of micro- and macro-level
  enabling conditions for adaptation
• Build local adaptation awareness and engage local
  NGOs (potential adaptation project implementers

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Thanks for your patience