Putting livelihoods thinking into practice: implications for development management

Abstract The failure of ‘blueprint’ development interventions to deliver substantive improvements in poverty reduction has been well recognised over the last twenty years. Process approaches seek to overcome the rigidity and top‐down operation of much aid‐funded intervention. Sustainable livelihoods approaches (SLA) are one of the latest additions to this family of approaches. As a theoretical framework and as a set of principles for guiding intervention, sustainable livelihoods thinking has implications for development management. Drawing on research exploring the application of sustainable livelihoods principles in 10 development interventions, this article considers how these principles have evolved from continuing debates surrounding process and people‐centred (bottom‐up) approaches to development management. This research suggests that whilst these principles can improve the impact made by interventions, the effective application of sustainable livelihoods and other process approaches are fundamentally restricted by unbalanced power relationships between development partners. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.