Creating sustainable rural livelihoods counties need to be atop their agendas. In moving towards development leveraging on natural capital, reduction of poverty and creating sustainable rural livelihoods, one missing factor is focus on social sustainability. Social sustainability largely concerns well-being, justice, power, rights and the needs of the individual.
Most Kenyan rural dwellers are jacks of all trades, trying to achieve a different range of livelihood outcomes. Women are the most vulnerable as they are mostly left in rural areas to care for children and family farms, as their husbands move elsewhere to work.These women use diverse farming methods and other small-scale sustenance methods to support their families, but how can they, and other rural dwellers make their work sustainable?
As counties try to help small scale-farmers and rural business people thrive with a decent living, social sustainability can be made a priority in their development agenda. This is done by looking at what natural capital the communities have and how they can leverage on them. Communities can grow economically and even have activities around their natural capital, which can in turn ensure their well-being and that of generations to come.
Natural capital are the processes and functions that take place within unique to particular ecosystems that benefit people. Some examples of communities sitting on natural capital resources include honey in Kitui, Makueni, Narok and Taita Taveta counties. Seafood in Kilifi and Kwale counties. Potato farming in highland areas of Kiambu, Nakuru and Uasin Gishu, among many other food-related resources.
People in areas with natural capital should make their particular produce unique and build strong cooperatives ensuring there is no means of compromise. They should also be able to set the price standards that they want and create the seasons when they want to increase the demand of their products.
In return, they will be able to become more economically empowered and have a deeper sense of ownership and well-being. By having strong cooperative organisations, they will be able to have stronger bargaining power with their counties in terms of farming conditions. Ultimately, there will be an increase in the well-being of our communities.
We would like to visit our relatives in rural areas and see those at low poverty levels have those levels reduced. We would also like to see their well-being and capabilities improved. Their various livelihood projects need to be resilient and the communities resilient as well and well adapted to the various contexts.
Resilience will only happen when they can take part in decision making processes, be able to come up with their own rules and regulations and be accountable to each other and invest in continuously improving themselves. For these communities, protecting their natural capital to ensure social sustainability and the needs of all community individuals are catered for is paramount.
The writer is a communications researcher and scholar, currently pursuing Peace and Development Work Studies in Sweden, [email protected]