Ask Ag About...Measuring Resilience

HI Demba, your point is understood, however, when measuring 'resilience' there are various levels which must be accounted. In USAID's measurement, for example, we have capacities which consider the 'collective social organizational precedence' AKA community-level. This is a key bridge between the household and its individuals and the system or network itself. As such, USAID has worked to developed resilience measurements which focus at the individual level (i.e. absorptive capacity), at the community level (i.e. adaptive capacity) and the systematic level (i.e. transformative capacity). If we were able to improve all 3 levels, this truly creates an environment which is 'sustainable' by mutually reinforcing each other.

Do you have any specific questions as to where certain components of 'reslience' would fit?

Great Lam, and thanks for answering to my commeent/question... In fact working with various NGO-CBO constituencies in West Africa and now about to expanding same model in Central and East Africa. I'm more so interested in the community level organizing through better outreach and communication in local value chain options and mechanisms.

Adaptive capacity rationale itself needs to be built in a framework of local community involvement model whereby such community is aware of their SWOT(Strength-Weakness-Opps-Threat) options and accordingly align a local development model based on needs and resources... Information is key into this process and that's where I would insist that any resilience measurement should weigh in that potential of scoping, understanding, and knowing, without which, such group can not for real cope with the uncertainties associated with the externalities they're exposed...

My question therefore: how information collection and dissemination is dealt with trhoughout your resilience measurement paradigm?

Demba, we have knowledge management activities tied to all of our M & E work. Some of this work is focused specifically on helping different stakeholders understand the resilience dynamics in their countries (i.e., through trainings, workshops, briefing papers, etc.). Other work planned for the future is going to focus on how to use the information/data derived from M & E for programming purposes. This work is going to focus on how to ask questions of the data, strategic analysis, and data use. We'll be putting out guidance pieces on these activities as we delve into them. 

Agree with Tiffany. At the field level our job is to further analyze and validate this information, determine conclusions and recommendations that can be communicated to our colleagues. While this may sound simplistic the approach itself necessitates cross-collaboration and agreement on a specific, defined appraoch; thus, it takes some time to gather consensus and determine appropriate decisions responding to the contextual need. Socialization of the information is key to making sure it gets used, which we are working hard to do. In the Sahel region, for example, we have online platforms and in-person discussions which allow for in-depth analysis of key issues and knowledge sharing. As Tiffany states, guidance pieces will be dervied from this information.

"it takes some time to gather consensus and determine appropriate decisions responding to the contextual need" Very well put and I agree with that, making inter-institutional collaboration a must on that end... I would be more than pleased to know about and share those online platforms you mention within the scope of this exercise...

Again Thanks Lam for your insights!

Great Tiffany, as critical as it can be, M&E is therefore central to your overall activities, and I do look forward to synergizing with your programme wherever possible in West Africa whereby most of my NGO-CBO-CSO network is spread under the GEF' network members... We lately developped a strategic plan 2015-2022 for which in West Africa, we're looking forward to launching an integrated multifocal area programme whereby the issue of resilience is sought to surface out more and more..

Look forward to sharing or partaking with the programme in the region!

Great question! You bring up the notion of complexity and a systems approach for addressing complex circumstances. From a programming perspective, recognizing complexity and dynamism necessitates thinking about long and short term effects, as well as unintended effects of interventions. I won’t delve too much into the programming given the focus on today’s chat, but from a measurement perspective, this is a very important topic the measurement field is grappling with at the moment. From a measurement/M & E perspective, this means that traditional linear approaches may not be appropriate for fully capturing the dynamic nature of the situation. Alternatives to traditional linear measurement approaches include systems mapping. The Lab at USAID is starting some work on integrating systems approaches and measurement work, and it may be helpful to connect with them to learn more. Also, you can check out OECD’s paper on systems and resilience, as well as FSIN’s paper on systems and resilience. We’ve also been thinking more and more about system-level indicators (like changes in food prices across time, etc.). This is pretty nascent when it comes to measurement, but it’s definitely on our radar! (I will post links to OECD and FSIN papers at the end of the chat!).

OECD: http://www.oecd.org/dac/Resilience%20Systems%20Analysis%20FINAL.pdf

FSIN: http://www.fsincop.net/resource-centre/detail/en/c/332113/

In most developing countries market models, unpredictability is the norm to the point where any disturbance can absolutely affect the whole structure, therefore one cannot stress enough how much it is important to create information-resource sharing in a timely and regular fashion, along with weather forcast data in a way that can avoid huges losses in fragile markets and income streams... Information is definitely an asset and there needs to be a focus on it!

Hi Gary, I think your point about the different forms of capital and how they feed into resilience at a systems level is a great one. I was recently at a conference that had discussions centered around resilience, and social capital really emerged as critical to community-level resilience (which isn't surprising!). Here was the blog post I wrote on those conference sessions, and below that is a link to the paper on the community resilience conceptual framework that I think many other folks in this discussion might be interested in:

http://agrilinks.org/blog/notes-seep-2015-some-thoughts-building-resilience-agricultural-systems-what-works

http://agrilinks.org/library/community-resilience-conceptual-framework-and-measurement-feed-future-learning-agenda

There are a number of resilience measurement approaches that are based on DFID's sustainable livelihoods framework, such as UNDP's 'COBRA' approach. The different type capitals are commonly understood as 'resilience capacities'. In addition to assessing changes to such capacities / capitals, most resilience measurment approaches also measure well-being outcomes. Such as nutrition, security, or poverty. And where possible, analyze how different sets of capacities / capitals appear to contribute to these outcomes.  

This is a great point, Gary, and as Dana notes, the concepts of ‘capital’ (and complex relationships between them) are a key in thinking about resilience and how to measure it. The way in which that falls short for measurement, however—which is integrated into most of the frameworks that are out there in some way—is that resilience is also about change and response to shocks. Hence, rather than capitals, most frameworks talk about “capacities” (absorptive, adaptive, transformative). A household can for example have a high level of capital—like, for example, a large number of livestock—but could not be resilient, for example because that capital is highly likely to perish in the case of a shock (such as a drought, meaning a dearth of absorptive capacity), and/or the household has little ability to adapt without their herd, or transform their situation so as to be less vulnerable. Hence, capitals are necessary, but not sufficient, for resilience measurement.

I have used the sustainable livelihoods framework and find the description of these capitals very informative. The group working on SLF expanded it to include vulnerability contexts and other features. Also the M&E framework whereby different capitals can be measured and graphed on a spider graph is useful to compare different situations and also to see where there are gaps that can be filled by donor assistance. It is a simple but effective systems model. For instance from some work we did in DRC, we found that some communities were high in social capital but low in financial capital while others (fishing communities) were higher in financial capital but lower in social capital. The lack of social capital in fishing communities meant that overfishing was a threat.

Peter, in this blog post I explored system-level resilience a bit and linked to a recent paper on market systems for resilience (for example). You might find it interesting! http://agrilinks.org/blog/notes-seep-2015-some-thoughts-building-resilience-agricultural-systems-what-works

I think your point about system boundaries is extremely important for measurement; in fact critical. Also, especially tricky, since systems are complex and not working in isolation from other systems.

If you have further resources please share!

Hi Peter

Thank you for this comment that I think is much important (I am starting from this comment, as this is in fact the basis for resilience measurement).

Many of the approaches recently developed and applied lacks of the academic/theoretic background which is necessary; the largest part of them do not consider the “setting the scene” phase of a measurement problem; there is an interesting paper from the technical working group on resilience measurement that addresses this topic.

In our case, with RIMA from FAO, we are interested to the resilience to food insecurity. Therefore we are focused on the food system and we see the household as a sub-system that can be adopted as entry point for the analysis. 

Peter, these types of questions are ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to measuring resilience, and from our perspective, a precondition of measuring resilience. The population (resilience among whom) and the shock or stress (resilience to what) must be specified before deliving into measurement. Otherwise, it's unclear what is truly being captured. The third question that we focus on is what outcomes are most important to capture. Lots of things can change as a result of shocks/stressors, and we can never measure them all. So, specifying the well-being outcomes we will focus on is also an essential pre-condition of resilience measurement.

I was not previously familiar with the SHARP tool, but have enjoyed reading about it. SHARP stands for "Self-evaluation and Holistic Assessment of climate Resilience of farmers and Pastoralists." The tool enables farmers to engage in a participatory self-assessment of climate resilience. Here is a link for more information: http://www.fao.org/agriculture/crops/thematic-sitemap/theme/spi/sharp/en/ 

I'd be interested to hear more from today's expert panel on self-assessments of resilience, vs. other methodologies.

Julie, a question after my own heart! Measures can be grouped in lots of different ways. One way is subjective vs. objective measures. Subjective measures tap into how people conceive of the situation and objective measures do not tap into one individuals’ construal of a situation. When it comes to deciding on which type of measure to use, more often than not, it’s helpful to have a mix of subjective and objective measures. For instance, in the context of measuring shocks, we’ve collected both subjective measures of shocks (whether individuals perceive they have experienced a shock, their perceived severity of the shock, etc.), as well as objective measures of shocks (soil moisture, rainfall, etc.). We’ve found that the measure “work differently” in our models, suggesting that they are tapping into different things. While some argue that objective measures are always the way to go, because they are the most “accurate,” when it comes to dynamics as nuanced as responding to crises, understanding how people are making sense of their circumstances can be essential to designing our programming (independent of what’s objectively happened). As such, I’m a strong advocate of self-assessments/subjective measures—in circumstances where we have reason to believe that individuals’ understandings are key for programming (particularly programming based on BCC). When subjective measures are being used as a proxy for objective conditions however, it’s important to try to substantiate/cross-check/validate them in some way. 

Peter, thanks for mentioning SHARP. What a neat tool. From investigating the SHARP site it does appear that they're still in field testing stage -- do you happen to know if they have any preliminary results?

Hi Dana,

This is John from FAO and in the SHARP team. We do have some results, however for confidential reasons have not posted very much online. We have a number of ongoing projects in sub-Saharan Africa including Mali, Burkina Faso, South Sudan and Angola. We will have a paper outlining some of this in Climate and Development in the coming months. We would be happy to speak with you if you have any questions however.

Best regards,

John

Hi John,

Thanks for this! I'm really interested in the research and methodology that went into building the tool, and to learn more about participartory use of the tool. Also curious as to how the SHARP team expects the results will be used -- to improve program design, empower local farmers and organizations to make strategic planning decisions, for policymakers...all of the above? 

If you'd be interested in connecting over these questions via email, please feel free to reach me at djames[at]kdad.org. I would love to read the paper upon its release and talk further about SHARP!

Hi Simon, great question

The attribution problem is THE problem. As you know Randomized Control Trial are quite rare in the field; there are a number of quasi-experimental approaches that can be followed which help addressing this issue; however I would be very careful with the attribution of the causal relationship.

Nowadays there is a number of approaches which suggest you can measure resilience easily; and easily attribute to a project an impact on resilience. I would suggest that only well-written and published documents/reports could be adopted as reference.

Getting to the “cost” part of the issue.. Do you remember the sentence getting around during the 70s? “if you think that knowledge is costly, try ignorance”. At least that is what I always repeat when project designer tell me “it costs too much”. We really urge for evidence; good evidence, with good and solid approaches. Otherwise we risk to fill-up a big black box with “resilience” written on it...

This is a very good point, Simon, and also a very difficult question. On one end of the answer are the potential for highly quantitative efforts first to have a research design that allows for some kind of causal inference (randomized designs or natural experiments), and then, in the case of resilience, to use panel data, and control for various types of human and other capital as well as for ecological variables. Jenn Cisse and Chris Barrett are developing a resilience metric that does this, using panel data from the Index Based Livestock Insurance program; a ‘short version’ of this approach is described in the paper linked at the top of this discussion, with another paper (as cited) forthcoming.

On the other end of the answer is the recognition that, in some cases, straightforward causal inference around resilience per se is not likely to be feasible. One could attempt instead to evaluate ‘intermediate’ outcomes, embedded within a theoretical framework that allows you to make plausible claims about resilience. Also, given the complexity and harsh conditions in many places where resilience measurement is important, engaging in mixed-methods approaches may also have more promise (I discuss this in a blog on Somalia, as linked in below; with further research with this team forthcoming). 

http://www.econthatmatters.com/2015/05/looking-beyond-the-lamplight-measuring-resilience-in-somalia/

Love the 'best practicitis' and agreed that such problems are often conflated and addressed with a 'tool kit' when much research needs to be done!

Good point on the various approaches that can be taken to improve agriculture practices and methods. From the Sahel Regional Office at USAID we have learned that knowledge capture and management add great value to the capacity building work we do. While difficult to pin down a number I would personally venture 30-35% uptake in performance. Exactly as you mentioned, peer-to-peer exchanges are an important means of harvesting the invaluable local knowledge, fitting to each context. Site exchanges, farmer clubs/cooperatives and dissemination of key market information are examples of ways which can facilitate this knowledge transfer. In other words, we know that the knowledge exists in the practitioners themselves and it is our job at USAID to capture that implicit knowledge in to more explicit knowledge in more physical forms of documentation. Afterwards, we are able to disseminate this information to initiative rich discussions which add value to the process, and really socialize what has been captured. We like to call these 'emerging practices' rather than 'best practices' as there is always room to learn, apply and improve.

i would agree with the term sustainable development rather than resilience as resilience appears just like another jargon word.

However, i would question how sustainable manure and organic pesticides are. With manure there are 2 problems, one is the quanity of manure available relative to that needed for an entire community. I had a Graduate student at AIT who estimated it takes 5 animal units and some 8 ha of unimproved communal grazing land to generate enough manure for a 1 ha commercial crop. That is just not available in smallholder communities. Also, collecting and distributing manure is too labor intensive in what is really a labor deficient environment. Please review the following webpage:  http://smallholderagriculture.agsci.colostate.edu/organic-source-of-nutrients-some-simple-computations-please/ The best you can do is take advantage of mobile composter (goats).

Salut Mamadou, a convenu que la résilience à long terme peut différer des parties prenantes aux parties prenantes. En fait, ici au Bureau Régional du Sahel a l'USAID, dans le cadre du portfolio Resilience in the Sahel Enhanced (RISE), nous avons des indicateurs clés qui suivent ce composent de notre programme: (1) le nombre d'agriculteurs qui ont appliqué de nouvelles technologies ou pratiques mangaement; et (2) le nombre d'hectares de technologies améliorées ou des pratiques de gestion. Comme vous pouvez le voir, ces indicateurs au niveau des résultats nous aident à mesurer les résultats intermédiaires des activités, avec un accent particulier sur les technologies et les pratiques sensibles au climat. Le fumier de la qualité et de pesticides organiques sont deux bons exemples de ce qui peut être utile si le contexte a été évalué et décidé d'être approprié.

Plus d'informations peuvent être trouvées ici:

• RISE: https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1866/RISE_resilience_in_the_sahel_enhanced_.pdf
• La résilience dans l'USAID: https://www.usaid.gov/resilience
• Learning Platform résilience du Sahel, qui favorise l'échange d'idées: http://sarel.245elmp13.blackmesh.com/rise-partners

Great question Amin! The way we’re conceiving of resilience is to capture resilience among whom (population) to what (shock) on what (outcomes). While many outcomes to date have focused on food security and economic well-being (i.e., poverty, assets, depth of poverty), one can choose which outcomes they would like to focus on, and nutrition outcomes are absolutely important to consider here. In our REGAL (Northern Kenya) and PRIME (Ethiopia) resilience impact evaluations, we examine nutrition outcomes. Another, personal area of interest (hopefully on our horizon in the near future), is investigating intrahousehold resilience dynamics with respect to nutrition outcomes (paying special attention to gender). All of this being said, ideally, a measurement framework that is specifically designed to investigate well-being in terms of nutrition wouldn’t just plug in nutrition outcomes, it would think about the specific nutrition-related capacities that help buffer individuals (including children!), households, and communities, from negative effects on nutrition well-being outcomes following a crisis/shock/stressor. This latter issue, as far as I know, has received less attention in the resilience measurement space, but is definitely ripe for more work.

Addressing individual measures of nutrition can definitely be part of resilience measurement—by some frameworks—in that, examining how individual-level nutrition responds to shocks over time will give you a measure of ‘nutritional resilience’. This is exactly what we propose in a recent paper (available at the below link).

 Even with less data-intensive approaches, however, one can  integrate individual nutrition into a resilience framework, as a key ‘outcome’ related to resilience capacities. An issue with RIMA, in this regard, is that the combined indicator potentially obscures this kind of specific / nuanced information.

http://agrilinks.org/sites/default/files/resource/files/food-security-measurement-upton-cisse-barrett-icae-august-2015-1.pdf

in looking at nutrition please make certain you factor in the calories need to undertake the manual labor expected of your beneficiaries: http://smallholderagriculture.agsci.colostate.edu/calorie-energy-balance-risk-averse-or-hunger-exhasution/

Hi Amin,

We have adopted information on nutrition in a paper on Mali that we are sending around. It employed a MICS survey and we are using anthropometrics measures to see the effect of resilience on them and the effects of shocks on them. In Somalia we should be exploiting the opportunity of our rich dataset and collect anthropometrics. You know we tried in Dolow 2 years ago. Shall we try again in Somaliland and Puntland?

Hi Brent! Nice to see you on this chat! I echo your question about how to account for the variability of household and community starting points when measuring resilience.

The closest I've seen to tackling this is an approach that Bapu Vaitla and others from Tufts' Feienstein Center are developing as part of a Mercy Corps program in Nepal. They have identified that a major weakness of past approaches to measuring resilience is that they presume the existence of a steady state (“equilibrium”) to which households bounce back. To address this, they are measuring resilience through quantifying correlation over time of food security. It gets pretty technical, and they haven't published on this as far as I know yet. But the gist is this: "Resilience is the time of autocorrelation decay: the time it takes for a household to lose a certain degree of correlation (e.g., half, total) with a past state. Quicker decay --> greater resilience." 

Hi Brent and Julie (and Jon of course!)

Good question; resilience is context and shock specific; so I don’t think there is a specific starting point; it is rather to see if the household is or is not able to cope with a shock and to learn from this. The idea of linking resilience to food security indicators or other well-being indicators is “sexy” but risky; there is not clear evidence, at stage, on how much a shock can affect a well-being indicator.

I trust that we need to pay much attention on the following topics: integrating resilience measurement and well-being indicators; classifying how households have reacted to different types of shocks and see what made the difference in one specific area/region/country with respect to one specific shock.

Hi Jan

Good question; measuring changes over time is one of the most difficult research topic in measurement. I think we should disentangle the coping mechanisms and the various components of resilience that can “activate” them. In the short-term, the key features/aspects/comonents of resilience should be the same; and they should make sure that the farmer can activate the coping strategies and mechanisms. Over the long-period, when a production system can change, then we can witness an important change into the coping responses and mechanisms. I think the key point of a resilience measurement is to make sure that you can measure IF and TO WHAT EXTENT a household is able to activate the coping mechanisms.

Interesting question Dick, and one that focuses on M & E more broadly, not just with respect to resilience measurement. When M & E is “done right” it is not a tool to confirm donor’s thinking, it’s a tool that has two main, and highly interrelated purposes—learning and accountability. When programming, our information is always limited with respect of knowing exactly how to help make people’s situations better. We do the best we can with the information we have, but learning is the key to making sure that we do better with each and every future endeavor. Learning requires knowledge. Knowledge requires information. Information requires data. Data is informed by our M & E. This learning is a “good” in and of itself, but is also intrinsically linked to the second reason we do M & E—accountability to American taxpayers. When we are more effective and efficient, we are doing right by our ultimate stakeholders. This is the case for M & E generally, and for resilience M & E specifically (which you can read more about in our USAID Primer on resilience-http://agrilinks.org/training/introduction-resilience-usaid-and-beyond) 

Hi Dick,

M&E should be "super partes" and, at least in my experience, I have never received any pressure from donors. I would only suggest to trust the M&E projects that are properly designed with a solid and scientific approach. I am more concerned with very easy M&E projects that pretend to deliver absolute answers and evidences. 

Marco, Check the reference in my next post and you can see where projects are promoted as highly successful when a few simple computation will show they are a complete failure and farmers are limiting thier envolvement.

For the DC based ag time, I hope all is well and you servived the storm. Are you able to attend from your offices or on line from home?

The AgTeam survived the storm, although a few of us are still digging out. It's very pretty if you don't have anywhere to go, and a lot of fun if you have the right gear.

And remember to refresh the page periodically to see new comments!

Sorry - how does one actually join the webinar? Thanks!

Hi Matthew,  This entire event is happening here on the event page via the comment feed. Please join us by posing questions to our panel and responding to your colleagues as appropriate.

Hi Matthew,

This event is actually an online chat and takes place right in this comment section. We'd love to have you join -- feel free to ask any questions you'd like or respond to someone else's question!

Hi Aisling, thanks for joining! I'd be interested to hear more about your measurement approach. Are you working with a specific development org or project that you can share more about?

We are an NGO, focusing on agriculture. We are undertaking a resilience programme in Burkina Faso - BRACED

Hi Aisling, USAID recognizes the good work that DFID and your NGO are undertaking in Burkina Faso. I believe a fellow panelist is going to answer the absoptive and transformative capacities. In terms of the adaptive capacity at the community level, key drivers to this particular composite index include: utilization of social capital, livelihood diversification (**extremely important to have different flows of revenue so as not to be mono-dependent on weather-based sources of income like for many agriculturalists/pastoralists), psycho-social  measures, human capital, asset ownership and use, access to financial services and access to natural capital and resource flows. Together, these individual factors allow the decision-maker to assess the ability of the community to be prepared for and to cope with shocks and stresses.

Hi Peter

In our approach we try to focus on various aspects of resilience; you can classify them as the three capacities (absorptive, transformative and adaptive) or with other names. With RIMA we can follow how they have changed over time and see the drivers of the change. 

Is this the type of capacities you are referring to?

Hi Aisling; I think there is a large possibility of consistency; both our approaches are quantitative based and focused on household. There may be some differences in the specific econometric technique employed; however they are very similar.

We are discussing with our USAID colleagues on testing whether the two approaches are consistent also in terms of results, by possibly employing same datasets and sharing the techniques.

I think we are all part of the same “research flow”, going in the same direction with the same purpose. As a consequence it should be easy to get to a consistent solution. 

We struggle with this challenge in Mercy Corps. My short response would be, "you don't". It isn't always worth the time and resources required to measure changes to resilience during short, smaller, and/or single sector interventions. It makes more sense to invest in robust resilience measurment across portfolios of programs over longer periods of time.

That said, I understand the need to be able to say something about program contributions to resilience even during shorter timeframes, and and when there is no real shock against which to really gauge resilience. In those cases, our approach has been two-fold:  

1) We take the opportunity to analyze the relationships between presumed resilience capacities and well-being outcomes in contexts of major shocks or stressors. For example, in the Philippines, we demonstrated the link between access to financial services and quicker recovery from Typhoon Yolanda.http://www.mercycorps.org/sites/default/files/Philippines%20Resilience%20ToC%20Testing%20Report_Final_03.06.15.cm_.pdf

2) Then we evaluated whether our typhoon recovery program (which was a short, discrete intervention) increased people's financial inclusion, which we determined is a capacity that will likely help them be more resilient with future natural disasters. https://d2zyf8ayvg1369.cloudfront.net/sites/default/files/IMPACT%20EVALUATION%20SUMMARY_FINAL_06.22.15.pdf 

This is a great question Luis. And I’m going to be slightly provocative in my response. I am not sure you CAN measure resilience per se, within the life of a short project, in the absence of a crisis/shock/stressor. BUT, what you CAN measure are the capacities people have to manage such an event if one occurs in the future. When going with this thinking though, it’s important to measure what you think a project can realistically change within the life of the programming. 

Thank you Tiffany. I guess my question was provocative in itself. Taking form yours and Jon Kurtz responses, I guess the first step is to be realistic about what can be achieved within a project of course. But maybe, agencies such as USAID should have a programatic approach to measure longer term impacts, resilience in this case, designed since inception with a longer time-wise scope. I have not yet seen impact evalations being incorporated as elements of a CDCS or RDCS. Do you know any example? 

Stephanie, this is a great idea and many folk have thought of it; but to the best of my knowledge no such repository as yet exists.

One piece of work that starts to move in that direction, that I worked on under the auspices of the Resilience Technical Consortium, involved an attempt to develop a comprehensive inventory of available data, as well as an ‘indicator classification’ system for resilience measurement. We used Turkana County of Kenya as a “proof of concept” example (and I can share it with you soon if you’re interested). All of these data sources were at the same time combined into a data platform, led by ICRAF (again for Turkana County). We also shared our framework with FAO/Kenya, and a team there was working on something similar (starting with “in house” data sources, ie those collected within UN agencies). 

Chris Barrett and Darek Heady have put forward a related proposal to develop “sentinel sites” around the world for measurement of all of the key indicators that would be necessary for resilience measurement—which you might find interesting (linked below).

http://barrett.dyson.cornell.edu/files/papers/2020resilienceconfpaper01.pdf

I have Peter!

To recap a reply I made above:

I have used the sustainable livelihoods framework (that measures  for instance social, financial, physical, natural capital) and find the description of these capitals very informative. The group working on SLF expanded it to include vulnerability contexts and other features. Also the M&E framework whereby different capitals can be measured and graphed on a spider graph is useful to compare different situations and also to see where there are gaps that can be filled by donor assistance. It is a simple but effective systems model. For instance from some work we did in DRC, we found that some communities were high in social capital but low in financial capital while others (fishing communities) were higher in financial capital but lower in social capital. The lack of social capital in fishing communities meant that overfishing was a threat while in other cases the levels of poverty were so low that there as literally no buying power. 

Thanks Diane.  Our work with Dr. Bert Morrow at Birmingham Southern College on social capital and expectations of social benefits in Uganda have really allowed us to understand resiliency seeking behaviors in a new way. I think it's in trying to understand how these behaviors contribute to the community around them that we are really struggling. I like the idea of visualizing the data differently to change up the conversation.

Hi Kristin, this paper on a conceptual framework for community resilience might be of interest: http://agrilinks.org/library/community-resilience-conceptual-framework-and-measurement-feed-future-learning-agenda

This paper has really provided a backbone for resiliency research. 

Here is a link to the ODI report that we found very useful:

http://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/9754.pdf

As I understand it, Peter, when we talk about “resilience TO” something, that something inherently includes both acute shocks and longer-term stressors—with the latter highly related to the challenges inherent in the context, often meaning the ecological context (such as in the Sahel), but also sociopolitical or even cultural. So I would say that ideally resilience measurement is adapted to address these factors in such settings. In a quantitative context, this means trying to integrate ‘systems’ indicators (rainfall levels and volatility, for example) into a resilience measurement attempt, with the choice of such indicators highly informed by the kinds of factors that affect livelihoods (and resilience). I hope that this points toward what you meant by your question.

To measure resilience in the context of longer-term stressors, several people have pointed out the need for higher frequency, and longer-term data collection and analysis. ChrisBarrett and Derek Headey's paper lays out the theory behind this: http://ebrary.ifpri.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15738coll2/id/128457

The place where I've seen some of these ideas applied is TANGO International's "Interim Monitoring Surveys" as part of their impact evaluation of Mercy Corps', USAID-funded PRIME project in Ethiopia. http://www.fsnnetwork.org/using-context-monitoring-understand-resilience  

thanks John, this is a very helpful response. Look forward to reading it. Am very concerned about the Global Resillience Partnership approach supported by KPMG/USAID/Rockefeller Foundation which is very short term, yet they want "impact" in the log frame and M&E methods...I could use this theoretical  analysis to make the case that in the context of the Sahel, higher frequency longer term data collection and action is essential...so thanks.

Peter, this is a fantastic question, and a point I’ve been pushing. Resilience isn’t just about responses to acute shocks, but also responses in the context of chronic stressors. In fact, much of the domestic work on resilience in the US has to do with how communities manage chronic poverty. We are delving into just this issue. Specifically, we’re beginning to think about conceptualizing resilience capacities in the context of chronic and extreme poverty, and closely related to this, how our measurement frameworks need to be adapted to reflect this different dynamic. We’re beginning to explore some of this work in Asia, and by the end of the year, should have a lot more to say on this topic. 

Hi Luis Antonio,

In fact the final proof of one’s resilience capacity would be collected only “after” a shock has arrived and passed away. This is why we all are looking for datasets which are a) panel and b) with a shock in the middle. However it is quite uncommon to find that type of dataset. What we can do is to collect as much evidence as we can and use this as a proof of “what happens when one specific example of shock occurs in one specific context”. We do have an example of what happened after Hurricane Mitch arrived in Nicaragua..

sure Stephanie. find here http://technicalconsortium.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Testing-for-Household-Resilience.pdf

Professor Donato works with us and Mr Ciani was one of his ex-student. 

Youth access to productive resources and some financial capital is critical. In my experience in Africa youth are looking to put together the necessary resources to get married and build a family. They may lack tenure rights and thus find it difficult to achieve objectives thorugh ag. In many areas ag is a poverty trap for those who do not have productive assets like tree crops, herds. Education may not help. Focus on ways to earn money.

This is a good article on agro-ecosystem resilience indicators and is open source:

http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss1/art18/

Samad, to respond from the point of view of my work in particular:

<!--[if !supportLists]-->(a)    <!--[endif]-->We define ‘development resilience’ as “the capacity over time of a person [or] household… to avoid poverty in the face of various stressors and in the wake of myriad shocks. If and only if that capacity is and remains high over time, then the unit is resilient” (Barrett and Constas 2014). 

<!--[if !supportLists]-->(b)   <!--[endif]-->This can be adapted  to a community level, either through aggregation of individual-level metrics or through using community-based approaches (usually mixed methods).

<!--[if !supportLists]-->(c)    <!--[endif]-->In our view, the “indicators of resilience” are less about the indicators themselves than about the properties of those indicators. Ie, you can look at “food security resilience” by considering a reliable metric for an aspect of food security, and how it holds up in response to shocks and stressors (which gets at the absorptive, adaptive, or transformative capacities).

Hi Peter. In Niger, what we recently undertook was a 'strategic resilience assessment'. The aim of this to answer the key questions needed to develop a contextualize program strategy for resilience: Resilience of what, to what, for who, and through what. Mercy Corps had developed some materials on how to do this: http://d2zyf8ayvg1369.cloudfront.net/sites/default/files/STRESS_Doc_R7%20%281%29.pdf

More detailed guidelines are coming out soon. As will be the report from our Niger assessment.  

Thanks, Peter. I agree; the focus does tend to be on the ‘acute’ shocks, in part perhaps because measuring their impacts may be easier to pin down. But, as anyone especially who has worked in the Sahel knows, the ‘chronic’ (and even sometimes reasonably predictable) stressors can be hugely significant to peoples' lives and resilience.