Event Date: Jan 26, 2016
Time: 12:00 PM to 01:00 PM (GMT -5)
Location: United States
Online: Online Event
Event Links: USAID Resilience Resources
Information
Join this month’s Ask Ag discussion in the comments area below to ask questions and share your own experiences with measuring resilience in a meaningful way.
Measurement is a key consideration for any development program, including those funded by USAID. It is, after all, one of the Core Operational Principles of USAID's Policy Framework. Resilience activities are no exception.
This month's Ask Ag discussion will consider how such a complex and context-specific issue as resilience is measured. Agrilinks has assembled a panel of M&E experts who are struggling with this very issue for a variety of donors, implementing organizations and learning institutions:Tiffany Griffin is the Lead Adviser on Resilience Monitoring, Evaluation and Strategic Analysis for the USAID Center for Resilience, which leads the agency's efforts to better integrate resilience into development programs. Lam Huynh, an M&E Capacity Building Fellow at USAID, will apply the "field lens" to your questions based on his experience coordinating a baseline impact evaluation on resilience in the Sahel.Joanna Upton has extensive experience researching food assistance policy in sub-Saharan Africa and its impact on local farmers and communities. Her recent postdoctoral work on resilience includes a paper that applies a resilience framework to the measurement of food security, which she co-authored with Chris Barrett and Jennifer Cissé. Marco d’Errico will share his experience authoring the Resilience Index Measurement and Analysis (RIMA), the FAO approach to measuring household resilience to food insecurity. He and his team measured resilience in almost 20 countries for the analysis. Jon Kurtz has worked with international NGOs and UN agencies to improve the impact of programming around livelihood, food security and disaster resilience. He currently serves as Mercy Corps’ Director for Research and Learning, where he leads the agency’s program research and impact evaluation efforts. Some guiding questions include:
- What are the primary metrics USAID and other donors are using to determine farmer capacities for resilience? What makes these metrics different from other metrics for resiliency?
- Are there existing tools that implementing partners can use to collect data on resiliency metrics?
- What tools does your project use for collecting information on the outcomes of interventions on resilience?
Ask Ag About...Measuring Resilience
Tiffany Griffin currently leads the resilience measurement, monitoring, evaluation, and analysis work for the Center for Resilience at USAID. Previously, she was Manager for Impact and Learning for the Democracy Fund, a private... more foundation in Washington DC, as well as a Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist at USAID supporting the Feed the Future initiative. In this latter role, Tiffany provided leadership on food security resilience measurement, particularly with respect to impact evaluation. She also provided technical leadership on all phases of the evaluation process, including project management, design, implementation, dissemination, and results translation. Using mixed-methods approaches and systems modeling, Tiffany has applied research techniques typically confined to the lab to complex real-world contexts. Prior to her food security work at USAID, Tiffany worked in the US Senate on domestic health policy, as well as on domestic food and nutrition policy. Tiffany Griffin received her doctorate in Social Psychology from the University of Michigan, and has Bachelors of Arts degrees in Psychology and Communications from Boston College. In her free time, she loves to cook (and eat) veg-centric cuisine, dance, watch documentaries, and make candles. less
Joanna Upton is a postdoctoral research associate at Cornell University in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management. Her areas of research include development economics, public policy analysis, food... more assistance, agricultural market analysis, pastoral systems, and resilience, with a regional focus in sub-Saharan Africa. Her work on food assistance policy analyzes specifically the relative impacts of cash versus food transfers in Niger, and the effectiveness of local and regional procurement and impacts on local farmers and communities. Recent work on resilience includes a paper co-authored with Chris Barrett and Jennifer Cissé that applies a resilience framework to the measurement of food security. less
Marco d’Errico works as lead econometrician for the Resilience Analysis and Policies team in FAO. He works on resilience measurement since 2009. He is the lead author of the Resilience Index Measurement and Analysis (RIMA), the... more FAO approach at measuring household resilience to food insecurity. Together with his team, he measured resilience in almost 20 countries, working together with World Bank, IFAD, UNICEF and WFP; the analyses range from country studies to impact evaluations. less
Jon Kurtz serves as Mercy Corps’ Director for Research and Learning, where he leads the agency’s program research and impact evaluation efforts. Prior to his current role, Mr. Kurtz worked with other international NGOs and UN... more agencies to improve their abilities to generate and use high quality evidence of program effectiveness and impact. Mr. Kurtz’ recent research includes studies that have examined the links between and between conflict and livelihood resilience in the Horn of Africa, the determinants of resilience to food insecurity in Sothern Somalia, and the roles of disaster risk reduction, financial inclusion, and social capital in disaster resilience and recovery in the Philippines and Nepal. His work has spanned both emergency and longer-term development contexts, including extensive stints in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mozambique, Kenya, Uganda and Zimbabwe. less
Lam Huynh currently supports the USAID Sahel Regional Office in Senegal which focuses on resilience. As an M&E Specialist he has over a decade of experience providing on development projects and activities. Having worked with... more USAID-funded partners, he has developed an expertise with U.S. government donor regulations for M&E design and reporting. In addition to his ability to build capacity in adherence to technical guidance for reporting, Mr. Huynh is skilled in results framework and indicator development, design and implementation of M&E tools, data collection methods and analysis, and evaluation reporting and presentations to decision-makers. He has solved data collection problems in challenging operational environments like Haiti and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and he has adapted methods to collect data from local and small civil society organizations (CSOs). In addition, he is skilled in facilitation and knowledge management for M&E. Mr. Huynh has an M.A. in International Development from American University (2009) and a B.A. in International Relations from St. Edward’s University (Austin, Texas, 2007). His field experience includes work in Haiti, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Central and South America, Central and East Africa and South Africa, India, and Vietnam. Mr. Huynh speaks English, French, Spanish and Vietnamese. less
Comments
From the perspective of the local development practitioner, resilience is just what you hold onto when change of the status quo is beyond our capability, requiring much greater input than one can individually provide... It can't be decreed nor objected, therefore is it safe to say that resilience is predicated collective social organizational precedence?
Demba Ndiaye - www.comengip.org
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!
Many of the local market systems that poor participate in are highly dynamic, especially those linked to global markets, climatic catastrophic (for eg current post-earthquake situation in Nepal) and unexpected market failure due to political reasons( like a recent so called economic blockade by India to Nepal, damaged all the market infrastructures where our agriculture inputs and outputs market mostly dependent) . In such markets failure situation, technological changes and price fluctuations occur in ways that poor people cannot hope to influence. In this complex situation how do we make resilient markets for the poor and small holders in general? What could be a good M&E frameworks to measures the impact results ?
Ekanath Khatiwada
Market Systems Advisor
Sabal ( USAID funded project), Nepal
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!
It would seem that resilience would be measured in terms of the types of capital that DFID popularized some years ago. I may not remember correctly but these may be - social, financial, natural, human, and physical. Wouldn't this be a sound basis for measurign resilience?
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.
Resilience is usually (or should be) about a system. A starting question could be "resilience to what, from what and for whom?" followed by "what system do we seek to make more resilient and what are the boundaries"? To what extent are these type of questions relevant to the issue of how meaningfully measure resilience? NOTE: I often see rather highly generic approaches discussed about measuring resilience.
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.
The FAO has recently developed a methodology for measuring the resilience of farming systems, called SHARP, and field tested it in several countries in Africa. It is one of the few approaches that are designed explicitly to assess change in the resilience of a farming system in a given agroecological zone. Are any members of the panel, and in particular USAID familiar with SHARP? Have experience with it? And if so, what is your assessment of its strengths and limits for measuring resilience?
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.
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!
Some good comments and responses - thanks for opportunity to ask a question...here goes:
How to determine if observed changes (outcomes, impacts) are due to a project's interventions, or the background 'noise' of the many exogenous drivers and influences? Controls/counterfactuals spring to mind, but tricky to standardise when dealing with complex systems, and greatly increase cost of conducting M&E. Thanks.
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).
As a small-scale diversified organic farmer in the U.S., one of the ways we've linked resilience building on our farm in both how we grow our fruits/vegetables/herbs is through managing diversity and looking for ways to expand edges (both ecologically and culturally). From the cultural/marketing side of our farm systems, we've been able to build resilience on our farm through having strong networks of other growers, wherein we can share resources/ideas/tips as well as expand out markets. Sometimes we're able to tap into local agriculture extension expertise and researchers, but this is not always the case, especially when program funding for knowledge sharing/workshops is limited or runs out.
I have also witnessed well-intentioned experts and scientists deliver'best practices and technologies to our farm and farmer networks without an understanding of culture or practical applications to specific field or farm systems. In another life, I was one of them. The result is 'best practicitis' or thinking that farming, poverty, and agricultural development are a sort of entwined technical problems that we can fix through technology and tools alone.
On our farm we look to other farmers and eaters for perspectives and advice as well as engaging expert knowledge. I'd love to learn how you might evaluate the ability to create/expand building networks of mutual support as part of program/project needs.
I've also participated as a volunteer with the F2F program and I love the model of peer to peer learning and exchange and am very grateful for the opportunity to share and learn with other growers, agriculture experts on both sides of the pond. I would love to learn in what ways the F2F program, other models of 'agriculture development' could support facilitating in-country networking/local grower guilds to build resilience/ capacity building effort as a way to monitor and evaluate F2F program success from the perspective of the farmer participants? Thanks so much for your time and consideration and the work you do in the world on behalf of farmers! I look forward to learning more.
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.
Il y a des coquilles dans mon commentaire que je reprends ici
De mon point de vue en notre qualité de fabricant d engrais et de pesticides organiques qui font partie de la chaîne de valeur et facteur important de la résilience car nous impactons positivement sur la productivité, la conservation des recoltes et la fertilisation du sol, avec des prix de - 30% .pour nous par la capacité de l'agriculteur à atteindre des rendements lui permettant de vivre correctement de son exploitation. , de proteger son environnement, et de consommer moins d eau, tout en faisant des économies, assurant ainsi un développement durable. Le mot résilience n est pas bien compris par les acteurs car on peux lui donner plusieurs significations et se mesure difficilement. Je préfère le developpement durable appliqué au changement climatique, ( Toutes les actions qui concourent à limiter l'impact du changement climatique chez les agriculteurs en particulier et sur la population en général ) ce qu il faut préciser est qu il faut qu on trouve une alternative à l utilisation des engrais et pesticifes chimiques qui impactent négativement sur le sol et la santé des populations qui ont du mal à se soigner et de ce fait ne permet pas une bonne résidence. C'est pourquoi nous sensibilisés les agriculteurs à s approprier de cette alternative :l engrais organique dans le cadre d'une fertilisation raisonnée. Actuellement avec notre innovation le BF2 (engrais+pesticide) nous avons noté des résultats très satisfaisants au niveau des utilisateurs qui ont compris l importance des matières organiques dans le sol . C est d'ailleurs la raison qui fait qu ils utilisent des bouses de vache et autres matières organiques pour maintenir la fertilité des sols . Il est temps de sauver le sol au Sénégal qui s est très appauvri du fait des produits chimiques. Mamadou DIENG Directeur Général Biotech Services Sénégal
www.biotechservices-senegal.com
English Translation:
From my perspective, quality manure and organic pesticides are an important part of the value chain and are important factors for resilience since they have a positive impact on productivity, the conservation of harvestable crops and on soil quality, with a profit of 30%. For us, the capacity of the farmer to achieve yields that allow him to live well from his endeavors, of protecting his environment and consuming less water, all the while improving the economy ensures sustainable development. The word resilience is not well understood by actors because we can give them a number of indicators that are difficult to measure. I prefer sustainable development that is readily applicable to climate change (all the actions that help to limit the impact of climate change on farmers in particular and the general population), which means that we need to be more intentional and we need to find alternatives to fertilizer and chemical pesticides that negatively impact the soil and the health of the populations that it impacts and who are inherently impacted by their living environment. This is why we need to raise awareness among farmers and help them to take advantage of this alternative: organic fertilizer in the framework of a well-thought out fertilization process. Actually, with our innovation of the BF2 (fertilizer+pesticides), we have noted very satisfactory results at the level of those folks who understand the importance of organic materials for maintaining soil health. This is the reason, therefore, that they are using cow manure and other organic materials to maintain their soil quality. It is time to save soil in Senegal that is depleted from the use of chemical products.
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
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?
Related to the issue of metrics (what is being assessed) what are the numeraries being used, i.e., what is the most appropriate unit of measure or scale for each of the metrics and how do we compare these when there are tradeoffs? Also, given that every household and community with have their own starting point, where are we in terms of better understanding important relationships between different types of resiliencies and relative thresholds -- one can assume that interventions resulting in imbalances between various forms of reliance itself opens up new forms of vulnerability.
Looking forward to a rich discussion!
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.
When farmers specialize in order to produce more for the market / for another market, the practices and mechanisms that brought resilience to their farming systems may totally change. How can measuring of resilience be dealt with in such a transition?
What are your experience with indicator sets for resilience at different levels of market orientation?
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.
I have some concerns about the overall M&E effort. The first is the M&E program representing? The donor that is hiring them, and looking for support for thier projects, or the underlying tax payers to make certain their tax dollars are well invested. The latter requiring a considerable more strigent M&E criteria that will guide future project to more effective means of assistance.
I look forward to being part of this discussion...in particular to hearing what questions are pressing, and sharing my responses along with such a diverse set of perspectives!