Human Needs
Many people think of basic needs as “food, shelter and clothing.” Others relate to the “hierarchy of needs” developed by Abraham Maslow, which lays out a pyramid in which basic, physiological needs must be met first (breathing, food, water, sleep), before higher-level needs – like safety, belonging, esteem, and self actualization – are met.
We have aligned ourselves with a slightly different approach, developed by the Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef, who identified ten basic needs, which are systemic and inter-related, not hierarchical. This approach is careful to distinguish between the needs themselves and the ways different people aim to satisfy those needs. These needs are constant across all different types of cultures and time-periods, but the ways people satisfy these needs vary dramatically.