Rural Livelihood systems, which are predominantly based upon agriculture, animal husbandry and forests, experience a dynamic pattern of interaction between socio-economic and biophysical factors for meeting the consumptive and non-consumptive needs of local communities. In such livelihood systems, appropriation of the natural resources - such as biomass and water - from within the physical and natural environment plays a very crucial role in sustaining the production of food and non-food agricultural products. Moreover, distinct differences are observed amongst the communities on the degree of dependence on the system. While some of the ascending groups look at the production systems to spiral them to surplus marketing, others are caught in the downward spiral of deprivation. In many areas, both these realities are embedded in a third reality of degrading natural surroundings, the effects are borne more severely by people who depend on such resources for their basic survival.

As we search for ways to bring in an improvement in the living conditions of the rural people we join the voices that espouse a world-view that the well being of the human society is in the long run based on the ecological health of the planet. By surfacing and acting on the inter linkages between the various components of a system we work on systemic drivers that can bring about a multiplier change –

• on soil and moisture regimes which improve the functioning of the entire ecosystem, or the ecological health which improves the social and economic well being,
• on collective action, the positive expression of which tilts governance towards more equable arrangements.
• And on commons both in physical terms and in meta physical terms as they are the only spaces left for the poor to subsist on, and as they serve as spaces to negotiate the expression of their existence on equal terms.