The Impact of Savings and Credit Cooperatives (SACCOs) on Sustainable Livelihoods in Rural Communities

This study sought to assess the impact of savings and credit cooperatives (SACCOs) on rural sustainable livelihoods using the case of Nekatambe Ward 13 in Hwange district of Matabeleland North province in Zimbabwe. The study adopted a qualitative approach and a descriptive research design which were consistent with the research problem. Using convenience and purposive sampling, local leaders, non-governmental organisation (NGO) officials and members of the existing SACCOs were selected as respondents. The major findings were that SACCOs played a significant role in sustaining rural livelihoods particularly through enabling members to fend for themselves and their families. In addition, NGOs helped cooperatives through capacitating members with knowledge and technical skills and that SACCOs impacted positively on sustaining rural livelihoods. However, quite a number of challenges are associated with SACCOs in their bit to sustain rural livelihoods; with the major ones being failure to recover loans, competition from more established cooperatives, lack of start-up capital, poor financial and managerial skills and the general national economic meltdown. From the study findings, the researchers concluded that, despite the challenges associated with SACCOs, their existence under members’ resilience, has generally improved the lives of people in rural communities to generate employment, boost food production, send their children to school and empower the marginalized among other positive developments. Accordingly, the researchers recommend that SACCOs should diversify their operations and invest in fixed assets in order to curtail challenges and make lucrative benefits that can sustain their families and communities. On the other hand, the government and other concerned stakeholders should support SACCOs in order to alleviate the possible challenges that cripple them in their bid to promote rural livelihood sustainability.

Sustainable Rural Livelihood and Poverty Reduction Strategies

This chapter presents the framework of sustainable livelihoods. The interests of this chapter derive from three issues: (1) How can one determine who in the population achieves a sustainable livelihood and who does not? That is, how does sustainable livelihood assist in eliminating poverty and reduce deprivation in rural communities? (2) What livelihood resources and institutional processes are necessary for enabling or constraining sustainable livelihoods for different groups? That is, does household livelihood help individuals or families to escape poverty? (3) What are the practical, operational, and policy implications of adopting a sustainable livelihood approach to poverty reduction? Namely, what constitutes a satisfactory basis for adopting a livelihood framework?

Does Lower Income Affect the Development of One's Innovative Ability in the Education Niche

The need of using creative and innovative education strategies in the low-income consumer setting has never been felt until this wake of the pandemic to assist for sustainable well-being. In this chapter, the role of improved education as a collective innovation measure in promoting awareness of the inclusive cover to the low-income consumers in the emerging countries will be perused in the wake of the 2019-nCoV virus in their struggle to cope with the unexpected management of risks in a more calculated way. The study provides the education challenges in the low-income insurance area posed to both consumers and providers and explains how their involvement is important through innovative programmes in the low-income cover niche such as digitalization amongst others. Since education indeed plays a huge role in enhancing participation in this field of low-income cover to entail sustainability, it will be wise that the policymakers, government officials, and others work closely with their consumers so that this problem can assist for sustainable livelihoods.

Evaluating for Resilient and Sustainable Livelihoods: Applying a Normative Framework to Emerging Realities

Evaluation has to reflect the evolving priorities of development and measure progress on their achievement. At the same time, evaluation must also incorporate newer demands from within the field such as increasing equity focus in evaluations, gender mainstreaming, and human rights. Environment and climate change became mainstreamed into the programming of development organizations following the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and formation of financing mechanisms such as the Global Environment Facility (GEF) in 1991. This chapter reflects on how the Independent Office of Evaluation (IOE) of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) addressed the growing demands on the evaluation function in terms of incorporating concerns on environment and climate within existing methodological frameworks, and also adapting its methodology to meet internal and external evaluation demands. The chapter considers how evolving methodologies, methods, and tools have helped IFAD overcome these issues.

Cotton production for the sustainable livelihoods in Punjab Pakistan: a case study of district Muzaffargarh

Purpose This study aims to analyze access of cotton growers to Sustainable Livelihoods Assets Pakistani Punjab. Design/methodology/approach This study uses the department for international development (DFID’s) sustainable livelihoods framework (DFID) (1999). Where data collection was done by using a well-structured questionnaire from 200 randomly selected cotton growers of the district Muzaffargarh. There are five livelihood assets (human assets, natural assets, financial assets, physical assets and social assets) in the SLF, this study has used three different indicators/proxies for each asset except natural assets, where four indicators were used to capture the salient features of the respondents’ access to that assets. Each indicator was given a weight by using the entropy technique to keep the consistency of the quantification. Livelihood assets indices were calculated in case of each livelihood asset for conducting Livelihood Assets Pentagon Analysis. Value of livelihood index ranged from 0–4. Findings Livelihoods Assets Pentagon analysis shows that cotton growers do not have proper access to all five livelihood assets. The asset with the highest capacity were social assets (sustainable livelihood index value = 0.3994), followed by natural assets (0.3294), financial assets (0.2511), human assets (0.2143) and physical assets (0.0897). Originality/value This study uses the SLF developed by DFID for analyzing factors affecting access to livelihoods assets of cotton growers in Pakistani Punjab. Sustainable agriculture and sustainable rural livelihoods lead to sustainable livelihoods where environment quality is taken into consideration. The study contains significant and new information.

The Concept of Oceanian Sovereignty in the Context of Deep Sea Mining in the Pacific Region

Based on an interdisciplinary experience addressing traditional dimensions in marine resource management in the Pacific, the socio-ecological interconnectivity between island communities, the ocean realm and the legal context concerning the management of seabed resources (Tilot, 2006, 2010; Tilot et al., 2018, 2021a,b; Mulalap et al., 2020; Willaert, 2020a,b, c; 2021; DOSI, 2021), this paper proposes to discuss the relevance and efficacy of the concept of “Oceanian Sovereignty” (Bambridge et al., 2021) in the context of Deep Sea Mining, from the different legal, environmental, anthropological, social, political, and economic science perspectives. The policies and practices developed in the Pacific in this context could well serve as a suitable model elsewhere to reconcile competing perspectives in addition to sustaining the Human Well-being and Sustainable Livelihoods (HWSL) and the health of the Global Ocean.

A theoretical and analytical framework to the inquiry of sustainable land management practices

The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical and analytical framework by explaining the sustainable livelihoods framework and farming system model from a sustainable point of view. The author studied over 200 publications downloaded using the electronic database search of EBSCO through UNISA online library in June 2018. Keyword combinations of ‘land’, ‘tenure’ and ‘sustainable use’ were used to search for peer-reviewed journal articles published in English from January 1980 to May 2018. The article examines most relevant literature to consolidate the necessary theoretical and analytical foundation in analysing individual and group motivations towards sustainable land management practices. The literature review affirmed that a comprehensive theoretical and analytical framework is scant to empirically analyze the determinants of sustainable land management practices. To partially fill this knowledge gap, the paper provided a generic analytical framework that gives insight not only on pre-decisional processes, but also on post-decisional processes of continued and sustained use of conservation technologies. The analytical framework is developed by combining the sustainable livelihoods framework with the farming system model. It is concluded that the economic theory of property rights may not be adequate as a model to guide land tenure studies and policy. It is recommended that a holistic approach and comprehensive analytical framework is vital for research and development endeavours to ensure sustainable land management practices.