Market Development in Crisis-Affected Environments - Emerging Lessons for Achieving Pro-Poor Economic Reconstruction

This paper documents, for the first time, practitioner experience and innovations in market development for income generation and livelihood security in crisis and post-crisis settings. War and natural disaster have devastating impacts on people’s ability to generate income and secure a sustainable livelihood that can help protect them from future shocks. Relief initiatives, in their admirable work to meet the basic needs of people affected by crisis, often inadvertently distort private sector markets and unintentionally create vulnerabilities and dependency. Market development (an approach to enterprise development, livelihood security, and pro-poor economic growth) attempts to avoid market distortion, and use the power of markets to move communities more rapidly from relief dependency to independent livelihood security. This practice is in early stages, but experience to date reveals several challenges.