A guideline for implementing a livelihoods-based approach to WATSAN projects

As yet there is no livelihoods based 'tool' specifically designed to help WATSAN practitioners apply a sustainable livelihoods based approach (although there are a growing number of more general livelihoods tools that can be used and adapted- see the links section).

What follows is a flexible guide or framework that will help project and programme managers to ask the right questions and to identify the key indicators to allow them to take a more livelihoods sensitive approach to implementing WATSAN projects. The guide is based on DFID's sustainable livelihoods framework and uses the "questioning mode" of the European Commission's Guidelines on Integrated Water Resource Management.

The guide is based on a set of problem statements, key questions and suggested tools/activities that, taken together, will help to ensure the best fit between an investment in improved water supply and the livelihoods of the recipient community. It is divided into sections based on the livelihoods framework, each of which has a 'problem statement' related specifically to WATSAN projects.

Academic application of the livelihoods approach could mean an exhaustive assessment of the entire livelihoods framework of a complete community, from which decisions could be made as to the best combination of investments and other activities to reduce poverty. This is not the approach taken in this guideline, which assumes an agency with a limited range of WATSAN-based interventions whose impact is to be maximised. This is a crucial difference as it reduces the need to collect data and helps focus the exercise on a concrete goal: the sustainable improvement of peoples' livelihoods through appropriate WATSAN interventions.

It is important to realise that the framework should not be applied 'all at once'. It should be used within the context of an 'organisations' approach to project cycle management. This helps to identify what tools or activities can be used to answer which questions when necessary.

The guidelines are therefore designed to help decide:

1. Which of the available approaches (interventions) is best suited to improving the livelihoods of key target groups;
2. What is the likelihood of achieving a sustainable improvement in livelihoods in the group using this approach;
3. What are the key activities to ensure both sustainability and maximum impact;
4. What quantifiable improvements can be expected and monitored for.

The concept of achieving the best fit between peoples' livelihoods and possible WATSAN interventions requires a thorough understanding of both the complexity of peoples livelihoods and the demands of the system in the same livelihoods focussed terms.

What and whose existing livelihood activities would you expect your intervention to build on and strengthen? What assets and institutional structures are necessary to make it sustainable (particularly with regard to O&M)? What assets will be added to by the intervention and what will be the impact of shocks and trends on the system? But also, what assumptions come packaged with the technology you intend to use, what level of skills is needed to maintain it, what are your assumptions about spare part availability, what physical setting is it most suited to, etc.?