Conceptual framework

The concept of Sustainable Livelihoods has been gaining increasing attention as a new focus for development research and aid programming. The concept was first used in the work of the Bruntland Commission in the mid-1980s, where the ideas of sustainable livelihoods began to be developed as an approach to maintain or enhance resource productivity, secure ownership of and access to assets, resources and income earning activities, as well as to ensure adequate stocks and flows of food and cash to meet basic needs (Goldman, 2000). The Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex has devoted substantial attention to the problem through a series of working papers and these have contributed to a framework for sustainable livelihoods adopted by the Department For International Development (UK) as a major programming thrust (DFID, 1999). Its importance as an organizing concept for development programming has also been recognized by the United Nations Development Programme (Carney et al. 1999).

A "Sustainable Livelihoods Approach" is an integrated package of policy, technology and investment strategies together with appropriate decision-making tools which are used together to promote sustainable livelihoods by building on local adaptive strategies. The sustainable livelihood approach has emerged as a bottom-up approach considering participation of all level of stakeholders in the development process. The livelihood approach put significant stress on the role of micro level, the "processes of collective empowerment taking place in localities" (Amalric, 1998). Rather than focusing entirely on "local" approaches to development however, sustainable livelihoods thinking advocates a combination of

both macro and micro measures, such that local action is responded to and is in harmony with macro developments (Carney, 1998; Ellis, 2000a).

The major difference from SL approaches to other approaches is its basis on people and their strengths and constraints as starting point; meanwhile the other approaches start with structures and areas. The other difference is reflected in conceptions of poverty between SL approach and the other approaches; the SL approach expresses poverty as part of the multi-dimensional and complex external environment and embraces the concepts of risk and vulnerability. In addition, SL focuses on the sustainability with all its multiple dimensions as a core concern. Sustainability was not considered explicitly in other approaches, especially Integrated Rural Development approach in 1970s (Carney, 1998).

UNDP was the first international organization (apart from NGOs) to adopt the human development approach, which sees poverty not as a condition but as a process in which poor people are leading actors struggling against a process of impoverishment (Goldman, 2000). It also focuses on people’s strengths and the assets they need to move out poverty (UNDP, 1998). But this approach was subsequently replaced by the promotion of sustainable livelihoods in the centre of its poverty eradication strategy. According to Goldman (2000), the poverty-focused development activity should be: (i) people centered; (ii) responsive and participatory; (iii) build on people strengths (assets) and address vulnerability; (iv) holistic; (v) multi-level; (vi) conducted in partnership; (vii) sustainable; and (viii) dynamic.

International non-governmental organizations, including CARE and Oxfam, were also early to adopt sustainable livelihoods approach and made a considerable contribution to the approach in 1998, following the 1997 DFID White Paper which focused on the eradication of poverty (Goldman, 2000). Different agencies used their owned sustainable livelihoods approach, however, it is clear that different agency’s approaches have much in common but that there are also some variation and difference in emphasis. The DFID’s Sustainable livelihoods approach is inherently responsive to people’s own interpretations of and priorities for their livelihoods (Carney, 1998).

DFID sustainable livelihoods approach is based on five asset categories including natural, financial, human, social and physical assets (Carney, 1998), whereas UNDP’s approach includes sixth asset, political asset, and strongly emphasizes the importance of technology and increase productivity (Goldman, 2000; Singh and Gilman, 2000). CARE stresses the importance of household livelihood security and considers natural resources and infrastructure as part of the context rather than as an asset, where they include human, social and economic capital. An important difference is that the CARE approach clearly focuses on an individual household, whereas in DFID and UNDP approaches the focus can also be a community (Goldman, 2000).

The common thread that unites all the agencies is that they link their ideas back to the work of Chambers and Conway in the early 1990s and most adopt the Chambers and Conway definition of livelihoods or some slight variation on this (Carney, 1998). However, gaining an understanding of sustainability and incorporating its

different elements into programmes is perhaps one of the more challenging aspects of SL approaches (Ellis, 2000a).

The DFID’s sustainable livelihood approach also essentially combines elements from number of concepts, which can be seen as good development practice. Emphasis is given to links between the micro and macro levels – a key aspect of the sustainable livelihood approach. By its own core principles, DFID’s sustainable livelihood approach can be used for different objectives such as impact assessment of technology, programme identification, design, planning and reviewing existing activities as well (DFID, 1999).

Apart from properly assessing the impact of aquaculture technology on people's livelihoods, technology needs to be developed in such a way that the result is appropriate for the end users in terms of technical and economic feasibility and socio-cultural acceptability. To achieve this, technology development should take a participatory approach, which encourages farmers’, researchers’ and extension workers’ involvement in the research process right from the start. With this approach, most experiments are done by farmers on their own farms and the researcher plays more of a role of catalyst and facilitator (Chambers et al. 1989; Pretty, 1995), which is quite different from conventional research. In general participatory approaches are more effective for adoption of new technology by target groups than large groups of farmers (Garforth and Usher, 1997). There is a clear need for methods to convert small-scale successes of participatory research for larger scale development (FAO, 2000).

Participatory field methods are likely to be abandoned if there are no institutional innovations which support them (Merrill-Sands et al. 1991). However, the institutional context for promoting agricultural technology is often problematic which could be minimized involving a variety of stakeholders (Del Ninno et al. 2003), promotion of pond-based agricultural diversification could be fit into similar situation.

These above concepts of livelihoods, participatory research and institutional context are considered in all stages of the current research. The process also included qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection, analysis and interpretation from the beginning to the end of the study.