Sustainable Livelihoods Framework
The Sustainable Livelihoods Framework (SLF) is an analytical lens for understanding how poor households construct their livelihoods, drawing on five categories of capital assets within a vulnerability context that is mediated by institutions and policies. Crystallised by Robert Chambers and Gordon Conway and operationalised by Ian Scoones and the UK Department for International Development (DFID) in the late 1990s, it shifts development analysis from sector-by-sector or income-only views to a holistic, people-centred account of what people have, what they do with it, and what outcomes result.
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Sources
- Scoones, I. (1998). Sustainable Rural Livelihoods: A Framework for Analysis. IDS Working Paper 72. Institute of Development Studies, Brighton. link ↗
- Chambers, R., & Conway, G. (1992). Sustainable Rural Livelihoods: Practical Concepts for the 21st Century. IDS Discussion Paper 296. Institute of Development Studies, Brighton. link ↗
How to cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Sustainable Livelihoods Framework (SLF / DFID). ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/en/development-studies/sustainable-livelihoods-framework
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