Photo: Jiro Ose/Ethiopia/2013 Lessons from Ethiopia in building community resilience to food crises

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1 Growing Resilience Photo: Jiro Ose/Ethiopia/2013 Lessons from Ethiopia in building community resilience to food crises Above: A young boy tends his herd in Ethiopia. Previously a barren landscape, Concern worked with local partners and the Ethiopian Government on a livelihoods and irrigation project that has transformed the area. We live in a world where 795 million people suffer from hunger and three million children die each year from a lack of nutritious food. Huge strides have been made in recent decades to tackle hunger the number of hungry people has declined globally by more than 100 million over the last decade and the Millennium Development Goal to halve the proportion of people suffering from hunger should be almost met by the end of However, with one in nine people still going to bed hungry each night and undernutrition contributing to 45% of all deaths in children under five, tackling hunger must remain high on the development agenda. It is the poorest who are least able to bounce back from shocks, such as droughts and food price surges, trapping them in a cycle of poverty and hunger. This in turn makes it harder for poor communities to cope with the next crisis. Building up people s and communities ability to cope with crises their resilience is critical to improving their food security and increasing their prospects of moving out of poverty. Research shows that building communities resilience to food and nutrition insecurity and ability to adapt to climate change is effective and far cheaper than responding to a full blown crisis. Thirty years ago a devastating famine killed an estimated one million people in Ethiopia. For many years after, the country struggled with extreme poverty, food aid dependency and periods of war. During that time, the international community s response focused on providing sufficient food aid to keep people alive. Then throughout 1990s the Ethiopian Government, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and donors made attempts to mitigate predictable food crises through a more coherent response that enabled people to combat food shortages before the need for widespread emergency aid. Since then, Ethiopia has experienced several droughts of a similar severity to the one that triggered the 1984 famine, yet none have resulted in widespread famine. Over the last 14 years, Ethiopia s hunger rating in the Global Hunger Index, an annual publication tracking global hunger produced by IFPRI and Concern Worldwide, has improved by more than 50%. Identifying some of the lessons learnt from Ethiopia s progress, and from Concern s work building communities resilience to food crises both in Ethiopia, and in over 20 other countries across Africa and Asia, this paper concludes that preventing food crises not only saves lives but it is a cost-effective use of donor aid budgets. It also makes recommendations to the UK Government based on the ongoing monitoring of our development work.

2 I want to continue to improve my livelihood so that I can provide more in my home. If there are new techniques and new skills Concern can share with me, I want to learn. Before Concern, I was hopeless; now I have hope. Alemitu Assen, 35, Concern programme participant, Ethiopia What is meant by resilience? Concern Worldwide defines community resilience to food and nutrition crises as the ability of a community, household or individual to anticipate, respond to, cope with and recover from the effects of shocks and stresses that drive or exacerbate undernutrition in a timely and effective manner, without compromising their long-term prospects of moving out of poverty and hunger. Concern Worldwide s approach to building community resilience Concern Worldwide currently works in four districts of Ethiopia: Dessie Zuria and Delanta in the north and Dugna Fungo and Kindo Koysha in the south. Our programme delivery is integrated and aims to: Increase incomes by building and diversifying livelihoods Address undernutrition, with a particular emphasis on the 1,000 days from the start of a woman's pregnancy until her child's second birthday, and by focusing on women s knowledge of, and control over, food at household level Tackle poor health, promoting good sanitation and hygiene practices and reducing the negative consequences of diarrhoea and water-borne diseases Improve access to clean water, reducing the time spent by women and children collecting water Address women s greater vulnerability to emergencies Strengthen community organisations Our work in Ethiopia has resulted in tangible improvements in the daily lives of people living in the communities we work in. An evaluation showed there to be positive nutrition outcomes, decreased incidences of malaria and increased access to safe water and nutritious food. One reason it is so hard for people in the poorest countries to increase their own food security is due to their community s inability to avoid or cope with recurring shocks and stresses, such as drought, food price spikes or conflict. Relief efforts, though important, do not typically address the underlying structural vulnerabilities of a population. Given this, both the humanitarian and development communities have arrived at the same conclusion: poor and vulnerable people need greater resilience in order for the long term development of communities, regions and countries. Building community resilience enables communities to better cope with, and adapt to, drought and other climate-related disasters, as well as recurrent household problems, such as seasonal hunger gaps, which can lead to food insecurity. Concern s approach focuses on practical, intelligent solutions that save lives, improve health and build livelihoods. There is also an emphasis on women, who are central to the welfare of their families and communities. We work with communities to identify the range of risks to their development and help them manage these risks, which range from drought leading to the loss of annual harvests to sickness in the family reducing income. By providing communities with additional assets, such as livestock to breed or teaching new crop cultivation techniques to increase yields, income and savings, they have something to fall back

3 The right to food is a human right. It protects the right of all human beings to live in dignity, free from hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition. The right to food is not about charity, but about ensuring that all people have the capacity to feed themselves in dignity. Jean Zieglar, the first UN Special Rapporteur on Food on when a crisis occurs. This integrated approach helps communities address the potential problems they face and brings the various components of development programmes together, resulting in coherent, well-coordinated action. Building community resilience works: lessons from Ethiopia In the Horn of Africa seasonal food shortages occur from February to June on an almost annual basis. This hunger season affects the poorest most, jeopardising their ability to cope with both the immediate and longer term pressures of climate change and population growth. However, Ethiopia has shown that the effects of drought can be beaten. The Productive Safety Net Programme was set up in 2005 by the Ethiopian Government to address chronic food insecurity. It provides cash or food to people who have predictable food needs enabling them to improve their own livelihoods and therefore become more resilient to hunger seasons. Concern Worldwide is building on the work of Ethiopia s local and national governments to improve communities resilience. We work in partnership with local communities and Cope Respond Recover government administrations and are pioneering a new development approach that both targets the most marginalised and vulnerable households and builds on community resources. The communities we work with have been coping with crises, like drought, for generations, we endeavour to build their knowledge, strength and positive cultural practices to improve food security. We also support their ability to analyse new or increased risks, and to help mitigate those risks before they negatively impact lives or livelihoods. Helping communities cope Building community resilience needs to be at the heart of development approaches. In Concern s resilience work, the early identification of, and response to, food shortages is part of our longer-term development programme. We believe that incorporating early response into long-term resilience programming will shift the disaster cycle from response to anticipation, preventing problems from escalating to crises. As resilience increases, the need for emergency response should decrease, resulting in more efficient and effective use of resources and ensuring better value for money from investment in overseas aid (see diagram). Recover Cope Mitigate Prepare Anticipate Mitigate Prepare Respond Anticipate We believe that incorporating early response into longer-term resilience programming will shift the disaster cycle from response to anticipation, preventing problems from escalating into crises.

4 Our work is taking place in increasingly complex environments. War, displacement, climate-related disasters, high food and energy prices, population growth, political unrest and migration are pushing us to think about the way in which we work. One of the ways we are seeking to work differently is by linking the work we are doing on the humanitarian and development sides of the equation to the building of community resilience in support of national-led efforts. Valerie Amos, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Invest in building resilience to save lives and money Not only is ending hunger a moral imperative, but investing in preventing food and nutrition crises also makes good economic sense. There is a significant economic cost incurred by not addressing hunger and undernutrition countries can lose between 2-3% of their GDP each year from loss of national productivity and decreases in economic growth. Aid spent well not only saves lives, it can contribute to the end of global hunger by creating the conditions for economic growth and good governance. The international community has an opportunity to invest in local development plans all around the world that are both risk smart and build people s resilience. For donor countries, building resilience is good value for money. Department for International Development's (DFID) own research in Ethiopia shows that for every 1 spent on building a community s resilience to prevent food crises, 8 is saved in future emergency response. Investing in resilience now will save the lives and livelihoods of future generations and will help us move to a world beyond aid. Conclusion and recommendations The UK Government is leading the way in the fight against poverty. Our increased aid budget, protected by law, has already influenced other rich countries to increase their own development budgets. We can be proud of a number of notable advancements our aid budget has fostered. In 2013, the multilateral organisations that DFID supported prevented 19.3 million children under five and pregnant women from going hungry. UK Aid reached 11.4 million people with emergency food assistance. DFID s BRACED (Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes) programme, launched in 2014, aims, through grants to NGOs and their partners, to scale up proven technologies and practices in developing countries to benefit five million people by helping their communities become more resilient to climate extremes. Now is the right time to increase commitments to resilience both in the UK and abroad. At an international level, several agreements are in discussion and are being worked out to reduce risk: the Sustainable Development Goals will start to be implemented at the end of 2015; at the Paris COP in December 2015 global action to tackle climate change will be agreed, and the World Humanitarian Summit 2016 aims to set the agenda for future humanitarian action. Meanwhile, the recently-agreed Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction provides a global set of priorities to guide countries future commitments to address the threat of disasters. Together, they offer the opportunity to ensure comprehensive commitments to reduce risks abroad and in the UK. Concern Worldwide s Growing Resilience campaign is taking a message to governments, aid agencies and the public that building resilience and improving food and nutrition security in fragile contexts is cost-effective.

5 Case Study from Dessie Zuria in the Amhara region, Northern Ethiopia In Dessie Zuria, in Ethiopia s mountainous Amhara region, Concern Worldwide runs a watershed and livelihoods programme. Smallholder farmer and widow, 35 year old Alemitu Assen (right), lives in the village with her three children and grandchild. Before Concern s programming she had nothing, I was begging from other farmers so I could feed my family. As part of a loan, Concern provided her with two ewes and a ram so that she could develop livestock. With the profits that came from breeding her sheep, she was able to buy a horse to plough the fields. She also bought an ox which, when the rains failed one season, she sold, so that the family weren t affected by the crop failure. By building her assets, she was more resilient and got through the hungry season. I want to continue to improve my livelihood so that I can provide more in my home. I want to buy another ox to replace the one I sold and start a vegetable garden so I can sell vegetables at the market. Soon, I will be able to build a new house. Before Concern, I was hopeless; now I have hope, she said. I want to continue to improve my livelihood so that I can provide more in my home. Photo: Jiro Ose/Ethiopia/2013

6 We are asking for the Department for International Development to: 1. Continue its leadership role promoting the resilience agenda in international forums and directly with governments in disaster prone, low income countries as well as donor countries. 2. Fund government capacity building interventions where appropriate in disaster-prone countries to ensure more effective government collaboration with communities on strengthening resilience. 3. Continue to provide multi-annual, flexible funding to support resilience building for the poorest and most vulnerable. This would include extending and scaling-up BRACED into a second phase and launching further funding mechanisms for resilience based on emergent learning and best practice. 4. The UK Government must support the commitment and delivery of funding by developed countries through the UNFCCC climate negotiations to help poorer countries adapt and build resilience to climate disasters. 5. DFID must support the integration of gender as a central consideration in resilience building programmes as this is a key influence on how people experience disaster. What parliamentarians can do: Join the APPG on Agriculture and Food for Development Work with Concern to promote tackling hunger and food crises in international development policy in Parliament and to DFID Register interest with Concern to table parliamentary questions Register interest with Concern to get involved in sharing best practices in resilience building between elected officials here and overseas Travel to one of our programmes in the Horn of Africa or in the Sahel For more information about how you can get involved please contact Francesca Fryer, Parliamentary and Campaigns Officer, at francesca.fryer@concern.net Concern Worldwide is an international development and humanitarian organisation working in 26 of the world s poorest countries and, within those countries, with the hardest to reach communities. For more than 40 years, we ve been working in partnership with communities, combining our expertise with their local knowledge to find lasting solutions to hunger and help people pull themselves out of poverty. / Tel: / Francesca.fryer@concern.net Concern Worldwide (UK) registered charity numbers (England and Wales) and SC (Scotland). Charitable company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales under company no