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BUILDING COMMUNITY RESILIENCE


TO UNDERNUTRITION Learning from the Past to Inform the Future


One of the biggest challenges facing the development community is how to win the war on hunger. Over the years, it has become clear that the traditional approach of temporary infusions of aid has not always succeeded in protecting the poor and vulnerable from food and nutri- tion insecurity. Far too many people still live on the edge—just one drought, one flood, or one crop failure away from starvation. For oth- ers, manmade conflicts may also limit their access to food. With about 100 years of combined experience tackling hunger and


poverty around the world, Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe have long known that in chronically food-insecure regions or areas of protracted crisis, the poor and vulnerable cannot cope with all the stressors they face. It is not possible to do effective long-term development work that allevi- ates hunger and poverty without planning for and managing the risks asso- ciated with disasters—especially in a world increasingly affected by envi- ronmental degradation and urbanization alongside climate change, economic pressures such as food price volatility, and population growth. That means resilience-boosting efforts must be a part of any programming that aims to help the poor and vulnerable become food and nutrition secure. To explore the concept of community resilience to undernutri-


tion in mostly rural settings, this chapter offers lessons learned from resilience programming in several different contexts where Concern and Welthungerhilfe work: Haiti, the Sahel, and the Horn of Africa. Haiti is characterized by limitations in food availability and access, while in the Sahel region and the Horn of Africa, extreme and persis- tent levels of child undernutrition point to a serious resilience deficit. The “resilience paradigm” is now part of the development discourse in Africa south of the Sahara, but it has only recently been introduced in Haiti. Lessons from Welthungerhilfe’s long-term programming experi- ence linking relief, rehabilitation, and development in Haiti (Box 4.1) and from Concern’s programs in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Niger, which have informed the design of a new program in Chad, demonstrate the add- ed value of resilience-oriented programming. In this chapter, “community resilience” in the context of chron-


ic food crises is defined as the ability of a community to anticipate, respond to, cope with, and recover from the effects of shocks and stress- es that drive or exacerbate undernutrition, in a timely and effective man- ner without compromising the poor’s well-being or their long-term pros- pects of moving out of poverty and hunger. Resilience therefore is the ability to bounce back from a shock. It involves being able to adapt to a changing and increasingly unpredictable environment by expanding live- lihood options through learning and innovation. The latter is a key ingre- dient for any radical change or transformation of livelihoods that might be required should a situation become untenable.


Note: This chapter by Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide reflects the views of these orga- nizations. It is intended not to present research findings, but rather to show examples from their practical work and experiences in the field.


Don Santiago Lewis Community of Pihni Auhya,


Nicaragua


“To get through hard times, we began to practice what our ancestors practiced: unifying the community to produce food and deal with social problems. We try to deal with the problem of pests by using organic pesticides. With training, we realized that chemical insecticides and pesticides change the ecosystem, lead to the appearance of new pests, and take years to decompose.”


María Marcela Peje Casimiro


Carhuaz Province, Peru


“We have already had two big landslides that flooded our farms, fields, and homes and destroyed the road, putting our access to food at risk. After the floods, it was difficult because we did not have access to food, and the donations that reached us were not very useful. They brought us food that we were not used to eating, strange food....”


“We started to build queshus [storehouses], which be- long to the community,... up the hill, where we keep our potato crop, corn, and other food. This allows us to eat in times of flooding or other times when we need it. We need to increase the number of queshus to be sure, because now we face floods and also un- known diseases in our fields.... Thus we can prevent our children and the entire population of our commu- nity from going hungry in times of flooding.”


2013 Global Hunger Index | Chapter 04 | Building Community Resilience to Undernutrition 33


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