Approaches of Resilience Building

Elora Ferdous Regional Change Lear- Resilience Building

Presented at the Christian Aid Regional Consultation on Resilience South Asia 06-08 Feb 2013, Kathmandu, Nepal

Whats different about resilience?

Is it just good development, or rebranding existing work? What does a resilience programme look like?

For Oxfam, resilience is the desired outcome, rather than a particular type of programme. The key is to start by considering the risks that a community faces, and work to reduce them.
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What is Resilience?

Oxfam defines resilience as the ability of women, men and children to realize their rights and improve their wellbeing despite shocks, stresses and uncertainty. Thus resilience:

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Resilience ..

Addresses shocks (e.g. disasters, conflict, food price volatility) and stresses (climate change, ecosystem decline, insecurity), and uncertainty

Is not just about coping which is often about selling assets, nor is it about bouncing back. . People must be able to jump beyond and to feel confident in their capacity to provide support for their families regardless of shocks and stresses

Is not just about early warning systems, and drought resistant seeds), - resilience requires changes to the structural causes of vulnerability and thus involves challenging the status quo.

Is ultimately about people,

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Resilience building is a process

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Key to Resilience building: Analyzing Risks?

Risks can be political, economic or environmental and include: Conflict, insecurity, violence and tensions; Volatility in food and commodity markets; Natural disasters; Climate Change; Crime, corruption; Overuse of resources, ecosystem decline and degradation.

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Risk Analysis at the Core of Programming

Risk analysis needs to: be substantially based on community viewpoints and put community voices at the centre reflect power dynamics, vulnerability assessments, inequality, gender and the most vulnerable groups look at current and future risk and recognise multiple hazards, long term stresses and uncertainty updated, to reflect increased understanding of complexities and changing contexts as the programme evolves.

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BUILDING RESILIENCE WITH EQUALITY

Resilience must lead to with the most vulnerable, as they have the hardest time in recovering from shocks and often are excluded from accessing the means that can protect them from destitution. Secondly, it will require the meeting of basic rights. Everyone has an equal right to life, liberty and security as well as a standard of living adequate for health and well-being, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, or old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond control

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 Thirdly, it requires challenging power imbalances which keep people poor, marginalised and therefore vulnerable. More powerful groups are able to capture more government services, control markets and exercise privileged influence over the structure of society Fourthly, it will entail leveraging resources to fund this. Greater resources need to be directed towards areas where there is a greater need for them

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Social protection as a pre-requisite for resilience..

Social protection programmes are particularly important for building resilience they are pro-poor and pro-growth

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Empowerment and building effective institutions

Access to resources and rights is governed by institutions. Institutions reflect power structures within society and are not always the most democratic, nor always provide rights and resources according to need.

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ENSURING ASSETS AND ACCESS TO RESOURCES FOR THE MOST VULNERABLE

Access to land is particularly important for both the rural and urban poor because it can provide a means of production, shelter, dignity, and a means for accumulation. Natural resources are a key to resilience building for poor people. Rural livelihoods and well-being are directly reliant on the diversity and health of ecosystems and the services they provide (e.g. fuel, food, etc.), and also most vulnerable to changes in those services

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Some of the barriers of Resilience building:

Development and humanitarian work is entirely separate. They work in Silos creating confusion between ways of working

Aid funding streams not fit for resilience work Resilience-building requires long-term (in the range six to ten years) flexible funding, often capable of addressing immediate and longer-term needs simultaneously

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Risk as Humanitarian issue..?

The central problem for risk is that it has been seen, as a humanitarian issue, and not been brought into the development discourse. In order to strengthen the essential political dimension, risk and resilience need to be integrated into development policy and practice at all levels.

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Where we start the Resilience building..

Disaster

48 hr assessment/ (Resilience building starts here)

EFSL ends ..Resilience building stars with development planning

Long term Development programme

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Tools we would be using for Resilience Building

PCVA EMMA HEA GEM

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Who we should work with?

Within Oxfam EFSL Economic Justice DRR Long term Development planning

Who are major resource providers On Climate change analysis

IFPRI IRRI CIAT

IFPRI: Pakistan Nepal IRRI: Bangladesh CIAT: South East Asia

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Measuring Resilience
Still developing....

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Risk management is key

National governments, donors, humanitarian and development organisations and civil society must put risk faced by the most vulnerable at the heart of all long-term planning and humanitarian and development work All development and humanitarian actors donors, governments, international organisations and NGOs should only fund and implement work which seeks to reduce risk, and provide greater support and resources to build peoples capacity to adapt.

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New ways of working

Resilience is not what we do but how we do our work humanitarian and development actors need to develop joint analyses and a single strategy. Donors and governments need to find new ways of providing long term flexible funding. Governments need to work together to ensure that risk and resilience are reflected in the post-2015 Millennium Development Goals.

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Thank You

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