Sustainable Livelihoods Enhancement and Diversification (SLED)

communities they are working with well and are already well respected by them. Even if they do not have
specific experience with SLED, such practitioners should recognise many of the elements within the
approach and be able to take on board the key principles underlying it.
II. Structure of guidance materials
In the following sections of this manual an introduction to the SLED approach is given. This sets out the
demand for SLED and in particular the need to build on past experience and existing conservation and
development practice. An overview of the approach is then given.
Sections 1-3 of this manual contain the guidance for implementing SLED and introduce the phases and
steps of the SLED approach. For the first two phases of SLED the manual sets out: a general overview of
the rationale for the phase and a list of phase outcomes; an overview of the key steps; objectives for those
steps; the skills involved in implementation; and the processes required to undertake those steps. For the
third phase of SLED, the activities of the field teams will be defined by the outcomes of the first two phases.
Therefore the guidance for this phase is based around the roles that the SLED team may play when
supporting the process of livelihood change in the long-term. In section 4, supporting processes for SLED,
which are important throughout its implementation, are described. These are presented with illustrations from
practical experiences of implementing SLED.
III. Overview of the SLED process
With increasing frequency, people who live in coastal areas of Asia find themselves facing a cruel paradox.
On the one hand, the coastal ecosystems on which many of them depend are affected by increasing levels
of degradation caused by a range of human activities (such as unsustainable fishing practices, pollution and
mining) and environmental trends (such as climate change and natural disasters). These processes are
affecting the livelihoods of coastal dwellers who depend on these ecosystems and, particularly for the poor
who often have limited alternatives at their disposal, leading to declining living standards or forced migration.
In some cases, local resource users are themselves at least partially responsible for some of this
degradation, but often the causes are beyond their control. This process is illustrated by the diagram in
Figure 1.
Livelihood
Outcomes
Reducing Livelihood
Outcomes
Resource
Degradation
time
Figure 1. Reduced livelihood outcomes caused by long-term resource degradation
On the other hand, efforts to manage and protect and conserve these ecosystems more effectively often
involve preventing or limiting the access of some or all local resource users to the resources they depend on
for their livelihoods. Protecting these ecosystems clearly generates benefits to society as a whole and to
future generations by ensuring that they are sustainable and that the services and benefits that they provide
will continue to be available in the long-term. But from the point of view of local resource users, and
particularly the poor, the impacts of such protective measures in the short-term are potentially even more
serious than the gradual decline of resource access that results from on-going processes of ecosystem
degradation. The introduction of new forms of management or protected areas - such as Marine and Coastal
Protected Areas (MCPAs) - can constitute a sudden shock where people find themselves denied access to
resources which provide them with a key part of their livelihoods.
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