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Verner
Table 1.1
Definition of Livelihood Assets
Capital
Assets
Physical
The stock of plants, equipment, infrastructure, and other productive resources owned by individuals, the business sector or the country itself. The financial resources available to people (savings, supplies of credit). Investments in education, health, and the nutrition of individuals. Labor is linked to investments in human capital; health status determines people’s capacity to work, and skill and education determine the returns from their labor. An intangible asset, defined as the rules, norms, obligations, reciprocity, and trust embedded in social relations, social structures, and societies’ institutional arrangement. It is embedded at the microinstitutional level (communities and households) as well as in the rules and regulations governing formalized institutions in the marketplace, political system, and civil society. The knowledge, experience and connections people have had throughout their lives, which enable them to succeed better than someone without such a background. The stock of environmentally provided assets such as soil, atmosphere, forests, minerals, water, and wetlands. In rural communities land is a critical productive asset for the poor; while in urban areas, land for shelter is also a critical productive asset.
Financial Human
Social
Cultural
Natural
Source: Augmented version of DFID 2001; see appendix C.
access to assets. For this book, the authors have added cultural capital (Bourdieu 1973, 1986; Bourdieu, de Saint Martin, and Clough 1996) to the five livelihood assets considered in DFID’s original SLF. Field research revealed that, particularly for indigenous people, the cultural dimension of livelihood strategies and social institutions is important for understanding the impacts of climate change and climatic variability. • Transformational structures and processes at play within the community. These are the institutions, organizations, policies, and legislation that shape livelihoods. They operate at all levels, from the household, community, and municipality to the national and international levels, and in all spheres from the most private to the most public. They effectively determine access (to various types of assets, to livelihood strategies, and to decision-making bodies and sources of influence); the terms of exchange between different types of assets; and the returns (economic and otherwise) on any given livelihood strategy. They also directly affect whether people achieve a feeling of inclusion and well-being and account for otherwise unexplained differences in the way things are done in different societies. These structures and processes can amplify vulnerabilities or be harnessed to enhance adaptive capacity and resilience.