Sustainable Livelihoods and the Right of Access to Food: Achieving the National Development Plan 2030 Goals on Poverty Eradication

• DOI: 10.25159/2522-6800/8044
• Pages: 1-28
• Author: Grace Mbajiorgu
• Published date: 01 November 2021
• Date: 01 November 2021

Article

Southern African Public Law

https://doi.org/10.25159/2522-6800/8044

https://upjournals.co.za/index.php/SAPL

ISSN 2522-6800 (Online), 2219-6412 (Print)

Volume 36 | Number 1 | 2021 | #8044 | 28 pages

© Unisa Press 2021

Sustainable Livelihoods and the Right of Access to

Food: Achieving the National Development Plan

2030 Goals on Poverty Eradication

Grace Mbajiorgu

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7414-8417

University of Limpopo

grace.mbajiorgu@ul.ac.za

Abstract

Poor and marginalised households often lack the basic resources and assets that

would enable them to cope with shocks such as unemployment, droughts and

illness, and stressors such as distorted economic policies, illiteracy and

landlessness. As a result, these households suffer severe poverty and food

insecurity and without government intervention, they are vulnerable to a

perpetual state of deprivation. Against this background, this article examines the

relevance and importance of the concept of sustainable livelihoods in promoting

access to food, with specific reference to the goal of the National Development

Plan 2030 (NDP 2030) to eradicate poverty. The strategies aimed at poverty

eradication as proposed in the NDP 2030 are discussed in relation to the

sustainable livelihood approach or capabilities approach as developed in

international law. First, this article discusses the origin and development of the

notion of sustainable livelihoods as advanced by international instruments

central to socioeconomic development and various scholars. The potentials and

shortcomings of the sustainable livelihood approach are also examined. Second,

livelihood assets in the form of land and policy are examined to determine their

significance in promoting access to food. Finally, a conclusion is drawn on the

integral role of the sustainable livelihood approach in enhancing livelihood

security and assisting households to adopt both coping and adaptive strategies

aimed at reducing poverty and food insecurity.

Keywords: access to food; capabilities; food security; livelihood; poverty; sustainable

livelihoods

Mbajiorgu

2

Introduction

Poverty deprives households of access to food because such households do not have

money to purchase food that is available in the markets. Poverty perpetuates food

insecurity as its various manifestations include lack of income and productive resources

that are sufficient to ensure sustainable livelihoods.

1

The United Nations Principles and

Guidelines for a Human Rights Approach to Food Security Interventions of 2006 (UN

Principles and Guidelines on Poverty Interventions) state that poverty is the denial of a

person’s rights to a range of basic capabilities, such as the capability to be adequately

nourished and to live in good health.

2

In this context, the right to food plays an important

role in relation to poverty alleviation, and food security interventions have a direct

impact on food-specific policies. Such interventions will also take account of the fact

that people living in poverty not only have needs but also have poverty rights, with the

right to food being one such right.

3

This is important because the right to food enables

people to have entitlements. Such entitlements place a duty on states to take relevant

legislative and other measures to ensure that the right to food is promoted.

In South Africa, such an obligation emanates from section 7(2) of the Constitution of

the Republic of South Africa, 1996 (the Constitution) which provides that the state must

respect, protect, promote and fulfil the rights in the Bill of Rights. The duty to promote

the right of access to food as entrenched in section 27(1) of the Constitution, read with

section 27(2) of the Constitution, is relevant to this article. Section 27(1)(b) of the

Constitution therefore imposes a positive obligation on the state to ensure that everyone

has access to sufficient food and water, subject to certain limitations imposed by section

27(2). This means that the government must devise and implement measures to give

effect to the right to food and these measures must be reasonably capable of achieving

the purpose of the right to food.

4

Needless to say, measures aimed at realising the right

of access to food should comply with the government’s obligations at both regional

5

1

The World Summit for Social Development Programme of Action (1995) para 19 provides that poverty

is a condition characterised by the severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe

drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information.

<https://www.un.org/development/desa/dspd/world-summit-for-social-development-1995/wssd-

1995-agreements/cdosd-introduction.html> accessed 28 March 2020.

2

Principles and Guidelines for a Human Rights Approach to Poverty Reduction Strategies. para 7

<https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/PovertyStrategiesen.pdf> accessed 28 March 2020.

3

UN Principles and Guidelines on Poverty Interventions (n 2) para 19.

4

Danie Brand, ‘The Right to Food’ in Danie Brand and Christof Heyns (eds), Socio-Economic Rights

in South Africa (Pretoria University Law Press 2005) 178.

5

Article 22(1) of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights of 1986 (African Charter) provides

that all peoples shall have the right to their economic, social and cultural development with due regard

to their freedom and identity and in the equal enjoyment of the common heritage of mankind, while

art 22(2) places a duty on state parties to ensure the exercise of the right to development. Taking into

consideration the framing of art 22 of the African Charter, there is a threefold duty in respect of the

right to development: an obligation to abstain from undertaking actions that could violate human rights,

a duty to protect citizens against acts that could violate their human right s, and a duty to fulfil mostly

economic, social and cultural rights [my emphasis]. Article 15 of the Protocol to the African Charter