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In the 21st century livelihoods will be needed by perhaps two or three times the present human population. A livelihood comprises people, their capabilities and their means of living, including food, income and assets. Tangible assets are resources and stores, and intangible assets are claims and access. A livelihood is environmentally sustainable when it maintains or enhances the local and global assets on which livelihoods depend, and has net beneficial effects on other livelihoods. A livelihood is socially sustainable which can cope with and recover from stress and shocks, and provide for future generations. For policy and practice, new concepts and analysis are needed. Future generations will vastly outnumber us but are not represented in our decision making. Current and conventional analysis both undervalues future livelihoods and is pessimistic. Ways can be sought to multiply livelihoods by increasing resource use intensity and the diversity and complexity of small farming livelihood systems, and by small scale economic synergy. Net sustainable livelihood effects and intensity are concepts which deserve to be tested. They entail weighing factors which include environmental and social sustainability, and net effects through competition and externalities.

The objective of sustainable livelihoods for all provides a focus for anticipating the 21st century, and points to priorities for policy and research. For policy, implications include personal environmental balance sheets for the better off, and for the poorer, policies and actions to enhance capabilities, improve equity, and increase social sustainability. For research, key questions are better …