Dr. Amen Xavier Kaushal
When Assets Are Not Enough
Two families may live in the same forest landscape. Both may have land, family labour, livestock, traditional knowledge and community networks. Yet after the same crop failure, wildlife loss or employment shock, one household manages to recover while the other slips deeper into insecurity. Why?
That question is more than an academic puzzle. In protected-area landscapes, livelihood security is shaped by the everyday interaction of farming, forests, wildlife, markets, public institutions and household choices. Datta et al. (2024) collected data from 345 households in ten villages in the Buxa Tiger Reserve and found vulnerability associated with human-wildlife losses, financial and infrastructural constraints, and access to facilities and government schemes was associated with household vulnerability. Pereira et al. (2024) likewise emphasise that livelihood vulnerability around protected areas is shaped by local context and interacting human-wildlife, environmental and social conditions.
A similar question emerged during my qualitative engagement with forest-dependent communities in Ajandoh Gram Panchayat, in the buffer landscape of Bor Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra. Households were not necessarily without resources. Many had land, labour, local knowledge, social relationships and years of experience of living with the forest landscape. Yet these resources did not always translate into secure livelihoods.
This points to a simple but important distinction: the issue is not only what households possess, but what they are actually able to do with what they possess.
Beyond Counting Livelihood Assets
The Sustainable Livelihoods Framework offers a useful way to think about this. It groups livelihood resources into five broad forms of capital: human, natural, financial, physical and social. In everyday terms, these include knowledge and labour; land, forests and water; savings and finance; roads, irrigation and other infrastructure; and the relationships and institutions on which people rely.
For forest-dependent households, these resources rarely work in isolation. A family may combine cultivation, livestock, wage labour, forest-resource collection and other activities. Whether that combination provides security depends on a wider environment of markets, infrastructure, institutions and ecological risk. Das and Behera (2024) used data from 300 households in Buxa Tiger Reserve to demonstrate that forest dependence varies with household characteristics, access to alternatives and participation in activities such as ecotourism. Their findings reinforce the broader point that livelihood outcomes cannot be understood from asset ownership alone.
Here a simple tally of assets can be misleading. When irrigation is uncertain, or crops are continually damaged, the land is of little productive value. Livestock may not be profitable without veterinary services and reliable markets. Traditional ecological knowledge may remain underused when value-addition opportunities are weak. Skills do not automatically become income when affordable credit, transport or employment opportunities are missing.
Assets, in other words, are the starting point of a livelihood—not the final outcome .
The Asset-Conversion Gap
I use the term asset-conversion gap to describe a situation in which relatively stronger livelihood assets do not translate into correspondingly strong livelihood resilience.
Imagine a household with cultivable land, family labour, livestock, local ecological knowledge and strong community networks. On paper, it appears to have a reasonable livelihood base. But if that household also faces repeated crop damage, seasonal employment, poor road connectivity, weak market access, inadequate credit and difficulty accessing public support, much of the potential value of those assets can remain unrealised.
The reverse can also happen. A household with fewer assets may sometimes cope better because it has stronger market connections, more reliable institutional support or a more adaptive mix of livelihood activities.
The point is not that assets are unimportant. It is that their value depends partly on whether households can mobilise them. Looking through an asset-conversion lens therefore shifts our attention from possession alone to the conditions connecting resources with outcomes
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Figure 1. Conceptual flow from livelihood assets to livelihood resilience and the asset-conversion gap
Source: Author’s conceptualisation, adapted from the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework.
What Can Block the Conversion of Assets into Resilience?
Three areas deserve particular attention.
- Institutional and market access. Government schemes, affordable finance, extension services, Gram Panchayat and Forest Department linkages, roads and markets can determine whether existing resources generate meaningful returns. Datta et al. (2024) reported significant associations between household vulnerability and proximity or access to facilities such as markets, financial institutions, health services and government schemes. I,nstitutional access, therefore, is not merely an additional benefit; it can be part of the mechanism through which assets become opportunities.
- Livelihood diversification. Depending heavily on one source of income can leave a household exposed to agricultural, environmental or market shocks. But diversification should not automatically be treated as resilience. A family strategically combining farming, livestock, enterprise and skilled work is in a different position from one taking up several insecure, poorly paid activities because its main livelihood has failed. The useful question is not simply, “How many activities does this household undertake?” but, “Does diversification expand choice and adaptive capacity, or is it a sign of distress?”
- Vulnerability exposure. Human-wildlife losses, agricultural uncertainty, seasonal work, market fluctuations and resource-access constraints can repeatedly erode household capacity. The same asset base may therefore lead to very different outcomes depending on the pressures a household faces and the support available to it.
From Field Insight to a Question We Can Test
The qualitative work in Ajandoh brought this contradiction into focus. Community interactions suggested the presence of valuable natural, human and social resources, but also seasonal agricultural insecurity, human-wildlife interactions, fluctuating employment, limited market access and gaps in institutional support. Finance, infrastructure, value addition and institutional facilitation repeatedly appeared as possible barriers to making fuller use of existing assets.
That experience leads to a quantitative question: why do forest-dependent households with broadly comparable livelihood assets experience different levels of livelihood resilience?
Building on these qualitative insights, a proposed household study across Ajandoh, Bangadapur and Dhaga will examine whether households with broadly comparable asset bases experience different levels of resilience, and whether institutional access, markets, diversification and vulnerability help explain those differences. The quantitative study will allow this field-based proposition to be examined more systematically by comparing household asset endowments with resilience outcomes and the conditions surrounding them. The aim is not simply to produce another inventory of assets, but to examine the conditions that may help – or hinder – their conversion into resilient livelihoods.
Conceptually, the pathway moves from livelihood assets through conversion conditions and livelihood strategies or diversification to livelihood resilience, while vulnerability can influence the pathway at different points.
This remains an exploratory proposition, not a claim of established causality. A small cross-sectional study can identify useful patterns and associations; larger and longitudinal research would be needed to understand how these relationships change over time and across protected-area landscapes.
Why This Matters for Livelihood Policy
The practical implication is deceptively simple. Livelihood programmes often begin by asking, “What does this household lack?” If income is low, the response may be another asset, a training programme or a new livelihood activity.
Those interventions may be appropriate. But an asset-conversion approach adds a second question: “What is preventing this household from turning the assets it already has into a secure livelihood?”
That question can lead to a very different response. Where land exists but returns remain low, the real constraint may be irrigation, wildlife-related crop loss or market connectivity. Where livestock already exists, veterinary care, fodder, insurance or market access may matter more than additional animals. Where communities possess knowledge of forest resources, value addition, collective enterprise and fair market linkages may be more useful than introducing an unrelated activity. Where skills already exist, finance, transport or institutional facilitation may be what turns those skills into income.
The policy shift, then, is from simply distributing assets to enabling assets to work.
Four Shifts for Livelihood Planning
- Diagnose conversion constraints, not only asset deficits. Household assessments should identify where the pathway from resources to livelihood outcomes is breaking down.
- Differentiate asset-poor from conversion-constrained households. The first may need additional productive resources; the second may benefit more from removing institutional, market, infrastructural or risk-related barriers.
- Strengthen institutional convergence. Agriculture, forest governance, rural and tribal development, local government, finance, markets and community institutions all influence whether household resources become viable livelihoods.
- Support adaptive diversification rather than simply counting activities. The aim should be to expand viable choices and reduce dependence on vulnerable livelihood sources, not to treat every additional activity as evidence of resilience.
The Question We Should Be Asking
The livelihood challenge in conservation landscapes may therefore be less about whether communities possess assets and more about whether the systems around them allow those assets to work.
Land without irrigation, knowledge without opportunity, livestock without market access and social networks without institutional support may represent potential rather than resilience.
If livelihood policy is serious about strengthening forest-dependent communities, counting assets is only the beginning. The more consequential question is whether households can convert what they already have into livelihoods capable of absorbing shocks, adapting to change and recovering from adversity.
Moving from asset distribution to asset enablement may offer a more grounded way of designing livelihood interventions—one that recognises what communities already possess while paying equal attention to the barriers that prevent those resources from becoming secure and resilient livelihoods.
Key Takeaways
- Livelihood assets matter, but possession alone does not guarantee resilience.
- The asset-conversion gap draws attention to households where relatively stronger assets coexist with relatively weaker livelihood outcomes.
- Institutions, markets, infrastructure, finance, diversification opportunities and vulnerability can shape how effectively assets are converted into resilience.
- Adaptive diversification should be distinguished from distress-driven coping.
- Livelihood policy should ask not only what communities lack, but what prevents them from using the resources they already possess.
Evidence Cited
- Datta, P., Rahut, D. B., Behera, B., Sonobe, T., & Naveen (2024). Assessing forest villagers’ livelihood vulnerability to the environmental changes in Buxa Tiger Reserve of sub-Himalayan India. Trees, Forests and People, 17, 100632. DOI: 10.1016/j.tfp.2024.100632 | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tfp.2024.100632
- Das, U., & Behera, B. (2024). Determinants of household dependency on Buxa Tiger Reserve in India for fuelwood collection and livestock grazing. International Journal of Geoheritage and Parks, 12(2), 241-255.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2577444124000170?via%3Dihub
- Pereira, J. G., Rosalino, L. M., Ekblom, A., & Santos, M. J. (2024). Livelihood vulnerability and human-wildlife interactions across protected areas. Ecology and Society, 29(1), 13. DOI: 10.5751/ES-14605-290113 | https://ecologyandsociety.org/vol29/iss1/art13/
About The Author
Dr. Amen Xavier Kaushal is a development consultant and academician working on socio-economic assessment, sustainable livelihoods, social impact assessment, community development, and applied social research. He is currently a Fellow of the DAPRF Data Analytics for Policy Research Fellowship – Cohort 5.0 at IMPRI Impact and Policy Research Institute, New Delhi.
Acknowledgement
This article was published by Sudeepti Joshi, a Research and Editorial Intern at IMPRI.
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