Introduction: Livelihoods in crisis: Challenges for rural development in southern Africa

This is an introductory piece to a series of articles that examine how various rural development and governance initiatives, concerning wild resources, land and water, have played out in practice in a series of rural areas in three southern African countries: Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe. By looking empirically and in detail at what has and has not happened on the ground, questions are raised about the nature of the current livelihoods crisis, its origins and potential solutions. What emerges, perhaps not surprisingly, is a complex story connecting livelihood change with the dynamics of politics and power, where easy technical or managerial solutions are not immediately evident.