Sustainable Livelihoods and Climate Change Adaptation

Course details

The ‘sustainable livelihoods approach’ to poverty reduction provides a valuable framework for understanding the opportunities and assets available to poor people and their sources of their vulnerability, as well as the impact upon them of different policies, organizations and institutional arrangements . This course aims to provide participants with a critical understanding of the key concepts, principles and tools of the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach in development planning and climate change adaptation contexts.

Module Objectives

• To provide participants with a critical understanding of the key concepts, principles and tools of the sustainable livelihoods approach to development
• To fully familiarise participants with all components of the sustainable livelihoods framework of analyses
• To provide participants with the analytical and methodological skills to undertake a Livelihoods analyses and / or use the Livelihoods approach in a development planning and climate change adaptation contexts
• To provide participants with the knowledge of how the SL approach can be integrated into disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation strategy and planning

Module Learning Outcomes

At the end of this course participants are expected to:

• have knowledge of the history and context of the sustainable livelihoods approach and different sustainable livelihoods frameworks of analyses.
• have gained a critical understanding of the key concepts and principles underpinning the Livelihoods approach.
• have the analytical and methodological skills to plan and undertake a Livelihoods analysis.
• have gained insight into how SL approaches and analyses links to and interacts with various other approaches to poverty reduction (such as people centred, human rights based, social protection, etc).
• have good a good grasp of how SL thinking can inform disaster risk reduction and change change adaptation strategies and planning.

Module Content

• Overview of SL concepts, principles and frameworks
• Household and intra-household relationships
• The Vulnerability context of the rural and urban poor
• Livelihoods Resources and assets – the 5/6 Household Capitals
• Social Protection and Livelihoods
• The role of Policies, Institutions, Organizations and Processes (PIPs)
• Livelihood Strategies and Outcomes
• Planning and Tools for Livelihoods research and analysis
• Integrating livelihoods thinking into Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Climate Change Adaptation programming.

Details of assessment and up to date reading lists for this module will be made available to learners following enrollment.