This short paper considers the poverty impacts of livelihood diversification and the potential challenges of creating a pro-poor rural non-farm economy (RNFE). Rural diversification can be defined as economic development of non-agricultural activities or a livelihood which has multiple, part-time components. It can be associated with a booming or recessionary economy or with accumulating or imm...

This paper examines the contextual nature of gendered livelihood strategies through a comparative study of rural women=s producer groups in former homelands of South Africa and Appalachia. This comparative approach situates gendered livelihood strategies in distinct local contexts that are constituted by specific historical dynamics and cultural relations. Producer groups are defined here as co...

The welfare of many poor and low-income rural households is vulnerable to earthquakes secondary geological disasters. academic literature, however, pays little attention the livelihood pressure, adaptability, strategies these households. Based on survey data 327 in Wenchuan Lushan earthquake-stricken areas Sichuan Province, strategy characteristics were analyzed, disordered multi-classification...

In semi-arid areas of Tanzania vulnerability context is depicted as the starting component for policy process analysis through the sustainable livelihood approach. Giving vulnerability a high prominence in this analysis allowed the research to consider all kinds of vulnerabilities as central issues to the ways in which livelihoods are shaped. Hence the Sustainable Livelihood framework was used ...

This article explores the concept of resilience as outlined in a recent World Bank publication that applies the concept to rangeland areas in Africa. The paper does not attempt to speak to all of the dimensions of resilience and debates about the concept’s applications to pastoral ecology and rangelands. Instead, we utilize a panel data set from northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia that has bee...

Although the negative impacts of volcanism on society are well documented and accepted, many possible benefits from volcanoes are not always fully considered. This paper provides suggestions for understanding and implementing volcanoes' benefits by suggesting further application of existing risk management frameworks to volcanology: living with risk by using the sustainable livelihoods approach...

M. Radeny, D. Nkedianye, P. Kristjanson, M. Herrero Summary This article addresses livelihood choices and income diversification strategies among agro-pastoralists and pastoralists in southern Kenya, and the factors influencing the returns to the diverse livelihood strategies being pursued. We explore how variability in income and wealth levels across households can be explained by household-le...

The study examined alcohol consumption and its effects on economic and social livelihood of selected rural communities of Enugu State. One hundred and twenty randomly selected alcohol consuming heads of households and sixty four purposively selected non-alcohol consuming heads of household were used. Data were collected using structured interview schedule and analysed using percentage. Alcoholi...

The water–energy–food nexus is being promoted as a conceptual tool for achieving sustainable development. Frameworks for implementing nexus thinking, however, have failed to explicitly or adequately incorporate sustainable livelihoods perspectives. This is counterintuitive given that livelihoods are key to achieving sustainable development. In this paper we present a critical review of nexus ap...