It was the guiding hypothesis of the studies on which this guide is based, that changes over the last few decades have led people to evolve new adaptive strategies. Such strategies - which are many and varied - can form the basis of sustainable livelihoods. This is not to say that they already constitute sustainable livelihoods, nor that they are a universal solution. They may need to be further adapted, amplified or modified by linking them to more formal, generalized scientific knowledge. They may need to operate in a more supportive or enabling policy environment. But any search for sustainable livelihoods will be greatly enriched and made more relevant by our beginning from the basis of initiatives already taken by the people themselves. In order for any of this to happen, these initiatives must first be identified, understood, described and analyzed in their dynamic contexts.

Participatory field research projects to identify, describe and understand adaptive strategies, and to make policy recommendations to foster an enabling environment, were undertaken in 1994-95 in an IISD project located in five African countries. The success of this pilot project has led to the preparation of this guide, to enable the project's wider replication in other countries, and in other ecological and climatic zones. Replication of this project can strengthen its objectives, and in particular:

• empower local communities by enabling them to articulate, document, legitimize, better understand and share their adaptive strategies;
• recommend policy formulations at local, national and international levels which strengthen successful adaptive strategies that have the potential to support sustainable livelihoods, to provide an enabling environment, and to articulate these strategies to contemporary knowledge;
• contribute to sustainable livelihoods and poverty reduction in arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs) and other environments;
• empower Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Africa and other developing regions by engaging them in a project that can meaningfully link their field experience with communities on the one hand, to the development policy environment on the other.

As the project developed, it became clear that this guide could have a wider readership for further replication, and it has therefore been revised and expanded, taking into account lessons learned and instructive examples from the pilot project. We believe that this version will be of value to prospective project implementors and to the development assistance community involved in the design and execution of similar field projects and policy analysis. We hope also that it will be of interest and value to the wider development assistance community in promoting the understanding that, in focusing on poverty reduction and sustainable livelihoods, it is important to start from an understanding of what ordinary people on the ground are already doing.

It is also worth stating what the guide is not intended to be, its assumptions, and limitations. It is not a detailed manual on how to undertake Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), Participatory Action Research (PAR), policy research, or quantitative surveys. The central concern is to ensure that teams select an appropriate mix of available research methods, particularly those based on participatory methods, so as to link meaningful field studies with policy research and thus achieve both practical results in the field, and policy reform for an enabling environment. The strengths and limitations of PRA are discussed, but PRA is only one of an armory of methods to consider. The guide concentrates on the principles to be borne in mind in executing this type of project, with sufficient examples and other information from actual experience to assist local project teams to make informed decisions. The scope and locations of the IISD projects have caused the examples and illustrations to be weighted towards ASALs in Africa. However, one hopes that projects which use the guide will be restricted neither to arid lands, nor to Africa.

The guide also does not dictate project design or detailed field methodologies, which would be futile. Each organization will have its own styles and strengths. More importantly, community-based research is highly context specific. The style and attitude of the researcher, the ability to enter a listening and learning mode are more influential in producing high quality results than the ability to apply specific techniques. What works in one situation may fail in another, and what frustrates one researcher may be plain sailing for another. Field methodology should therefore be driven by the dialog and dynamic in the field situation, and not by a prescriptive document. Common questions, more than common methods, will ensure meaningful comparisons between findings in different places.