Livelihoods and institutions are key entry points for addressing wider problems of poverty. NRI's work in this area brings together its multidisciplinary skills in social and natural sciences, and staff with a common interest in the development of social, economic, institutional, technical and policy recommendations to support sustainable livelihoods.

• We aim to develop and promote interdisciplinary and policy-relevant work on the livelihoods of poor people, in order to strengthen capacity at all levels to alleviate policy and to manage the environment in support of sustainable development.
• We work with institutions and communities in developing countries to help poor people to increase the contribution of natural resources to their livelihoods. We are concerned about the impact of development interventions on poverty and gender relations, and we seek ways for poor people to adapt to long-term changes and to cope with shocks and consequent crises in their livelihood systems.
• We seek to identify and promote the social, economic, policy and institutional changes necessary for the poor to access and benefit from innovations, information and technical experience.
• We subscribe to principles of stakeholder participation, in order to build partnerships and capacity with, and among, developing country organizations.

Historically, NRI's strength has been in research and development on natural resource management issues, but we have now broadened our scope to include interrelated areas of development such as health, rural water and sanitation, gender and development, urban poverty, analysis of regional development, and good governance issues. We have contributed to thinking on, and implementation of, sustainable livelihoods approaches by donor agencies (especially DFID and the World Bank).

Key areas of our capability are:

• Climate Change
• Land Tenure
• Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Natural Resource Management
• Community-Based Natural Resource Management
• Access to Land and Reducing Vulnerability
• Social Analysis in Research Design
• Urban Livelihoods and Urban-Rural Linkages
• Institutional Development and Capacity Building
• Developing Participatory Methods
• Professional Development
• Performance and Impact Assessment