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RAP
is committed to finding ways to improve target
peoples’ assets and capabilities, so they can take
advantage of new opportunities |
sustainable. Improvements
to peoples lives might be attained through reducing
vulnerability or through enabling and enhancing
peoples’ prospects for taking advantage of new
opportunities, opportunities brought about by
greater accesssibility to the goods and services which poor
people value.
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RAP
principles for more sustainable livelihoods
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Pro-poor: Surveys are carried out to identify the poorest people
who are invited to be part of the road building groups
(RBGs).
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EPIs Approach: Enhancing and protecting interventions provide
mitigation measures as well as methods to enhance the
capabilities of local people to benefit from RAP.
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Community-based labour: This brings employment opportunities to the people and
is sensitive to agricultural seasons and existing
livelihoods.
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People centred: RAP is based on pro-people planning criteria. In the
six districts where RAP works access to roads
within half a days walk will be provided to 75% of
the population.
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Empowerment: The poorest people within 1.5hours walk of the road
will be selected for formation of groups,
establishment of savings and credit schemes,
opportunities for strengthening personal and social capital (PSCA) through functional literacy classes and enhanced
knowledge and confidence.
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Holistic:
RAP
plans to consider all the relevant aspects,
social, political and economic, needed to reduce
vulnerability and enhance prospects for more
sustainable livelihoods.
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Strengths
based:
Builds on what people already have or know i.e.
current ways of living (existing livelihoods
however inadequate or meagre) and existing
community knowledge systems.
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Dynamic
and flexible:
Making extensive use of livelihood (process)
monitoring, adapting the programme to the changing
environment.
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Micro-macro
links:
From household to community to village to district
to national.
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Partnerships:
Based on ‘Our road–Our future’ to foster a
sense of ‘ownership’. Implementation through
partnership agreements between donors, central
government, district, village, communities and
households.
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Sustainability:
Applied to all interventions with a focus on the
poorest and most excluded in the community.
Potential
Impacts of RAP Roads on livelihoods
The
potential positive and negative impacts of RAP roads
in relation to livelihood capitals or assets are best
summarised with an ‘Assets Pentagon’. The
relative lengths of the lines joining each point of
the pentagon with the centre, represent the
accumulation of the different types of capital.
Increases in these capitals or assets contribute to
improving poor peoples’ livelihoods. The aim of RAP
is to create significant increases in the human,
social, physical and financial capitals, without
undermining the natural resource base (the natural
capital) or existing livelihoods.
Potential
Impacts and Outcomes of RAP
| SOCIAL
CAPITAL |
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Current
situation:
Positive Impacts:
Negative Impacts:
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Poor
people socially excluded, strong ethnicity and
caste divisions.
Group formation, better social
relationships, social inclusion -increased exposure and mixing of different ethnic
groups, caste
differences reduced.
Increased
migration to urban areas, increase in
prostitution, increased consumption of alcohol, girl trafficking,
increase in gambling, increase in crime. |
| HUMAN
ASSETS |
|
Current
situation:
Positive Impacts:
Negative Impacts:
|
Low
life expectancy, particularly for women and
children, low literacy
levels and lack of good education.
Increased access to educational opportunities,
improved health and
life
expectancy, of women and men.
Exploitation of girls trafficking and
prostitution. Increased out migration of
'educated' youth. |
| PHYSICAL
ASSETS |
|
Current
situation:
Positive Impacts:
Negative Impacts:
|
Lack
of access and facilities e.g. health,
education, markets.
Enhanced infrastructure, more choice and
cheaper consumer goods.
Exploitative and extractive practices by
'outside' traders. Subsidised
'imports'
complete with locally produced products and
damage existing
livelihoods. Increased dependency on
outside material commodities. |
| FINANCIAL
ASSETS |
|
Current
situation:
Positive Impacts:
Negative Impacts:
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Un/under-employment,
low savings and investment, borrowing from
unofficial sources, acute indebtedness,
extortionate interest rates,
feudal systems,
bonded labour.
More employment opportunities, savings,
productive investment for the
poor, (better) access to markets, increased
relative land values,
increased access to
financial institutions for loans etc.
Price of local commodities (including labour)
increases, land
speculation, marginal land
recovered from share-croppers,
dependence on
outside financial institutions. |
| NATURAL
ASSETS |
|
Current
situation:
Positive Impacts:
Negative Impacts:
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Fragmented
low production holdings, organic production,
non
sustainable agricultural practices.
Increased land utilisation and production of
crops, food, timber and NTFP.
Increased land utilisation and production of
crops, food, timber and NTFP. |
Enterprise
Development in RAP
RAP
recognises that if the poorest people within a
community are to benefit in the long term and have
more sustained livelihoods, personal and social
capital accumulation are imperative for taking
advantage of new opportunities. Building poor
peoples’ confidence to take more control over their
own lives takes time, and RAP further recognises that
this process will require a minimum of two years to
achieve. Thus the timing of the inputs for introducing
enterprise development opportunities is as important
as the promoted activities themselves. If enterprise
development opportunities are introduced too early,
poor people will have neither the means nor the
confidence to benefit from them. Instead outsider
traders will be quick to capitalise on new investment
opportunities for production and marketing and the
poor will again loose out and continue to live their
lives of subsistence and poverty.
To
prevent this from happening, RAPs vision is to create
economic opportunities for the ‘poor with
potential’ through enterprise development and access
to work in the RAP districts. Through a series of
livelihoods and enterprise development studies,
current livelihoods with the potential for enhancement
will be identified. This will include skills upgrading
for crafts people such as blacksmiths and shoe-makers
and the training of artisans for opportunities in
building and construction etc. The studies will also
identify potential for increasing crop and forestry
production; including the potential for high value
non-timber forest products. They will also indicate
opportunities for bringing ‘added value’ to an
area through processing of materials such as drying.
In
conclusion, more secure and sustainable livelihoods
for poor people will only result if RAP is able to
bring about changes which substantially strengthen the
position of those previously excluded from the
development process. Providing access and building up
financial capital are important, but they must be
under-pinned by substantive social capital
accumulation if sustainable livelihoods are to result.
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