The sustainable urban livelihoods framework recognizes the fact that few poor rural households and perhaps even fewer poor urban households in the South depend on a single income-source. Income is one of several resources that households utilize to satisfy diverse goals (access to material goods and services, good health, less vulnerability, empowerment etc) and ensure their survival and development. Poor households utilize a combination of material and social resources or assets, as well as individual capabilities and activities to support their members. These are the essential elements that define a livelihood. It is the inadequacy of the household’s asset portfolio,  its vulnerability to stresses and shocks combined with a lack of support from local institutions and policies that can lead households to fall into poverty. Conversely, better access to social and material assets, improved capabilities and diversified activities to deploy assets combined with a more supportive institutional context can move households out of poverty.

The livelihoods framework distinguishes five types of assets or “capitals”: natural capital (such as land, water, pollutants); financial capital (money); physical capital (houses, equipment, vehicles, animals); human capital (health, skill); and social capital (networks of trust, exchange and mutual support, which all individuals and households maintain to a greater or lesser degree). There is considerable interdependence among capitals. This may involve substitution when one type of capital is in short supply, for example when lack of adequate space (physical capital) leads to drawing on family (social capital) to lodge children. There may also be deliberate depletion of one capital to enhance another, for example, using savings to pay for children’s education, or exhausting a piece of land to generate increase in short term income.

Within the urban context, the livelihoods framework will facilitate identification of competing and complementary activities within households and among individuals in relation to agriculture and will highlight specific problems and opportunities.

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