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A Response Paper on the Livelihood Framework: Chambers and Conway’s “Sustainable Rural Livelihoods: Practical Concepts for the 21st Century;” Murray’s “Livelihoods Research: Transcending Boundaries of Time and Space;” and Brown et al.’s “Livelihood strategies in the rural Kenyan highlands” (Name) (Subject’s Name) (Instructor’s Name) (Date) One of the first ever scholarly articles published on the livelihoods framework, which actually seeks to address the issues of “capability, equity and sustainability” in the human population’s way of living, is the article of Robert Chambers and Gordon R.

Conway entitled “Sustainable Rural Livelihoods: Practical Concepts for the 21st Century.”1 However, the main arguments of the livelihood framework in Chamber’s and Conway’s work also garnered critical acceptance from other scholars, most notably Colin Murray’s “Livelihoods Research: Transcending Boundaries of Time and Space,”2 and Douglas Brown et al.’s “Livelihood strategies in the rural Kenyan highlands.”3 In this case, the researcher would try to identify the key arguments of the “livelihood framework” according to the article of Chambers and Conway, and would try to compare and contrast it with the works of Murray and Brown et al.

In addition, the researcher would also try to give a thoughtful evaluation of the main arguments of the livelihood framework by Chambers and Conway, including its strengths and weaknesses, in light of the criticisms on this framework as provided by Murray and Brown et al. In light of the growing human population, the dwindling of the earth’s resources, and as well as the inequity of the distribution of wealth and resources, Chambers and Conway actually proposes a new framework that would solve these problems: the concept of “sustainable livelihoods.

”4 According to Chambers and Conway, sustainable livelihood can actually be seen when “it maintains and enhances the local and global assets on which livelihood depends, and has net beneficial effects on other livelihoods.”5 In this case, with the human population continually growing on exponential rates never seen before (especially now in the 21st century), to ensure the continued survival of the human population and the preservation of the earth’s resources, it is important that sustainable livelihood must be practiced.

6 In order to achieve sustainable livelihood, in policy making, the richer must commit to “change their life styles to make lower demands on the environment,”7 while the poor must be able to integrate into their livelihood practices the three concepts of “enhancing capability,” “improving equity,” and “increasing social sustainability.”8 However, Murray has a critical eye on this “livelihood framework” stating that livelihood research must not only focus on “policy-making (the prospective approach),” but also on “circumspective and retrospective approaches (including a focus on historical and social contexts leading to social reconstruction),”9 aspects which Chambers and Conway ignored.

Meanwhile, Brown et al. also had critical assessments on the framework of Chambers and Conway, arguing that it is also important to integrate financial, demographic and geographic determinants to livelihood intervention policies,10 factors which are absent in Chamber and Conway’s framework. Bibliography Colin Murray, “Livelihoods Research: Transcending Boundaries of Time and Space,” Journal of Southern African Studies, 28 (2002): 489-509. Douglas Brown et al., “Livelihood strategies in the rural Kenyan highlands,” AfJARE, 1 (2006): 21-36.

Robert Chambers and Gordon R. Conway, “Sustainable Rural Livelihoods: Practical Concepts for the 21st Century,” Institute of Development Studies, DP 296 (1994): i-42.