Livelihood Security Index Research Articles

Measuring Household Livelihood Security at the Family and Community Level in the Developing World

This paper highlights one of the recent attempts to measure progress at the family and community level—the household livelihood security approach. The objective of this approach and an experimental household livelihood security index is not national or even large-scale subnational crosscomparison. Instead, it is a participatory, rapid community assessment technique that helps to identify the constraints to peoples' well-being. Its use is to help communities and their partners develop a profile of these constraints and to discuss and design effective programs to overcome the barriers to better health, nutrition, housing, education, and livelihood security. This paper addresses the following themes: (a) introduction, (b) a brief progress measurement history, (c) the household livelihood security approach, (d) the household livelihood security index, (e) how the index is used, (f) future issues, problems and prospects, and (g) conclusions.

Ecotechnology in industrial practice: implementation using sustainability indices and case studies

The paper explains how to design eco-sustainable technologies, following the pathway from ‘high-tech’ to ‘clean/er tech’ and to ecologically as well as societally sustainable ‘eco-tech’. ‘Eco-principles’ are derived from the ecosphere, representing the intelligence of nature as the result of evolution, and serve as guideline for the general eco-restructuring of technology and many other areas of society, e.g., education and landscapes. Indices for the estimation of sustainability with its four dimensions (economical, social, ecological and technical) are presented, the sustainable livelihood security index (SLSI), the sustainable process index (SPI) and a general index (SI) are formulated. Case studies illustrate the achieved ecological sustainability by applying the SPI in case of bioprocesses for industrial productions: drinking water denitrification, control agents in agriculture and polymers comparing the biological with the chemical production.