Rural areas in the Global South are evolving, as are the challenges and opportunities facing people in these areas.
Resilient livelihoods enable rural people to adapt to, and with, changing challenges and opportunities: they are integral to movement toward more equitable and environmentally sustainable rural futures.
Our research and engagement activities seek to understand the various dimensions of livelihood resilience, so that people in rural areas can be better supported to improve their circumstances and wellbeing.
Rural change
Rural change is visible in land occupation and use, the environment, demographics, livelihoods, labour arrangements, infrastructure and politics. Some of the factors driving change are urbanisation, education, conflict, mobility and migration, and digital connectivity.
In 2022, 43 percent of the world’s population – that’s about 3.4 billion people – lived in rural areas. Globally, poverty is concentrated in rural communities, while climate change disproportionately affects rural people and the land-based activities, the core of rural economies. Rural areas can be particularly vulnerable to ecological disturbances and shocks.
Livelihood resilience: the core concern
‘Livelihood resilience’ refers to the ability of individuals, communities and rural economies to ‘bounce-back’ from disturbances and shocks. However, in rural areas, where the starting point is characterised by poverty, exclusion and vulnerability, bouncing back is simply not sufficient. Here, livelihood resilience is also about the capacity to ‘step ahead’ – to escape poverty traps, unequal power relations, and exclusionary and unsustainable systems of production and commercialisation.
However, despite the recent scholarly and policy emphasis on resilience generally, livelihood resilience in the context of rural change remains insufficiently theorised and understood. Its potential contribution to progressive rural policy and interventions has therefore been limited.
Building on six decades of pioneering work on agriculture, rural economies, gender and livelihoods, IDS is committed to addressing the conceptual, evidential and policy gaps around livelihood resilience and rural transformation.
Our model of livelihood resilience incorporates three properties, the abilities to:
- resist stresses that threaten to put life and wellbeing at greater risk and uncertainty;
- bounce back after livelihoods have been disrupted by shocks; and
- take advantage of opportunities to step ahead toward more sustainable and equitable livelihoods.
Each of these properties is relevant at multiple, interdependent scales, including individuals, households, communities and rural economies.
And finally, they can be strengthened through social protection and support (to limit and/or recover from disruption), political economic and institutional change (to redress material and other inequities), and technological change (to enhance productivity and sustainability, with inclusion).
Addressing the conceptual, evidential and policy gaps
Social provision
Lives and livelihoods, particularly of the most vulnerable, come under severe pressure in times of crisis, and this is when policy and programmes are robustly tested.
Our work seeks to better understand both, how different kinds and combinations of crises affect livelihoods, and the effectiveness of policy and programmes in supporting livelihood resilience. These insights are used to help design and evaluate better, more equitable and more crisis-responsive policy and programming.
For example, our work asks how social protection can be mainstreamed in development policy to provide comprehensive and sustainable mechanisms to support those most affected by crisis. Inevitably this requires enhanced and effective coordination among international, national and local actors, across multiple fronts, which can be a significant challenge in itself.
Similarly, our work explores the nature of coordinated, multi-sectoral interventions encompassing food security, nutrition and health, and climate, that can increase the positive impacts of policies and programmes that seek to support livelihood resilience.
Our work highlighted how some responses to the crisis put livelihoods at increased risk, for example COVID-19 crisis including through disruptions to local food systems.
Work along these lines is undertaken through Agricultural Policy Research in Africa (APRA), Better Assistance in Crises (BASIC), the Centre for Social Protection (CSP), the Chronic Poverty Advisory Network (CPAN), and other major programmes and centres.
Institutional change
Markets of various types are ubiquitous in rural areas, including those for agricultural products and labour. However, there are still many questions about the role of markets in relation to the three properties of livelihood resilience – resist, bounce back, and step ahead – and how the benefits of market engagement can be made more equitable.
For example, our work explores the role of rural labour markets in fostering and potentially addressing the youth employment crisis in Sub Saharan Africa. We challenge the prevailing development policy discourse, including narratives that most young people are stuck in ‘waithood’, by highlighting their multiple identities and their involvement in many economic and other activities.
Our research analyses the livelihood impacts of different value chain governance regimes for globally traded agricultural commodities, such as tea, coffee, cocoa, and tropical fruits. More broadly, our focus on inclusive trade sheds much needed light on the distributive dimensions of international trade, and interactions with efforts support transitions to more sustainable and inclusive food systems. Our research also examines regulatory stringency as a critical influence on business competitiveness, firms’ export capacity and positioning in global value chains.
Markets and contexts are diverse, so it is critically important to understand the relationships between different pathways to market-based agriculture and investments in agricultural commercialisation investments, and food and nutrition security. This, for example, was the focus of our research and engagement around national and regional rice development strategies across East Africa.
This work is being undertaken by the Future Agriculture Consortium (FAC) and the Centre for Development Impact (CDI), among other initiatives.
Technological innovation
Economic and social change are often linked to new technology. However, the nature of the discussion about technological change in rural areas has moved from an almost exclusive focus on agricultural technology such as seeds and fertiliser, to a much broader view including digital, AI and the like. Nevertheless, the fundamental questions of who gains from technological change, and in what circumstances remain, and indeed take on renewed relevance in the light of our core focus on livelihood resilience.
We continue with a long-standing interest in the politics of knowledge around agricultural and technological change. For example, we have scrutinised corporate control of sustainability discourses, policy spaces and funding, as reflected in latest globalised movements towards regenerative farming and nature-based solutions. We have also taken a critical approach to debates around ‘climate smart agriculture’ in low- and middle-income countries.
In other work we support transformative adaptation and equitable resilience to drought and co-construct sustainable and equitable ‘water development pathways’ in tropical drylands under rapid development through inter- and transdisciplinary collaborations. Work along these lines is undertaken by Equitable Resilience to Drought for Sustainable Development (ERDSD), Climate Adaptation and Resilience in Tropical Drylands (CLARITY), Groundwater Futures in Sub-Saharan Africa (GroFutures), and other projects and collaborations.
Moving ahead
Our work has helped to understand how people adapt to and with rural change, producing evidence that has informed policy and practice. But there is tremendous scope for further methodological and conceptual developments.
The conceptual must bring together the growing literature on resilience with understandings of rural livelihoods literature. While much has been written concerning measurement of and indicators for livelihood resilient, it remains under-theorised. This is a lacuna that we will address.
In line with IDS tradition of interrogating whose reality counts, this should start from people’s own perceptions of their ability to resist, bounce back and step ahead. This can be done by using methodologies that elicit and build on people’s perceptions (of stresses and shocks) and aspirations (to change) when assessing the effects of rural interventions on livelihood resilience.
There is also a need to address structural and systemic barriers and power differentials constraining people’s ability. This can be done by placing equity centrally in rural livelihood resilience framings and interventions, while considering how resilience at multiple levels (individual, household, community) may be interrelated and interdependent.
Finally, there is scope for exploring the interdependence of human and ecological resilience in rural livelihoods and asking what stepping ahead means for people living with nature.
This IDS Blog was written jointly by members of the Rural Futures cluster.
