Poverty reduction is the ultimate objective of both the Market Development and Sustainable Livelihoods approaches. However, the means by which to achieve poverty reduction often differ under these approaches. Realising the need to find common grounds of understanding between the two approaches, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) organized a seminar on Making Markets Work for Poor (in short: M4P), looking for complementarities, divergences and synergies with other approaches to poverty reduction. This seminar in particular focussed on the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA).

The following series of three papers (prepared by The Springfield Centre on behalf of the FAUNO Consortium) explore synergies, complementarities and divergences between the M4P and Sustainable Livelihoods approaches.

1. Complementarities, divergences and synergies
   This main paper outlines the conceptual framework used to assess the two projects in the case studies (below) as well as summarising the seminar discussion.
   
   
   
2. Case studies
   These case studies compare two projects in Bangladesh: KATALYST for M4P and LEAF/SAAKTI for SLA, with a third case study reporting on a joint initiative between KATALYST and LEAF/SAAKTI.
   
   
   
3. International development cooperation: seeking common principles that underpin a coherent approach to poverty reduction
   These briefing notes describe the analytical framework under which the M4P and SL approaches were compared to each other.