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Food Policy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/foodpol

Fit for purpose? Rethinking food security responses in protracted humanitarian crises q
Daniel Maxwell *, Patrick Webb, Jennifer Coates, James Wirth
Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts University, Boston MA 02111, USA

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
The recent rise in the price of food worldwide deed easy categorization. However, the impact of the price hikes on developing country consumption served to refocus attention on food security. Much attention was paid to short-term buffering of nutrition in tandem with new investments in agriculture a dual approach that served to reinforce a longstanding bifurcation in analysis and programming between emergency and development categories, suggesting that emergency responses deal with immediate needs while development means addressing underlying causes with a longer-term lens. The notion of the relief to development continuum has long been dismissed as conceptual framework, but has never really been replaced as a programmatic framework. This paper suggests a multi-dimensional way of conceiving of these categories and a more systematic way of thinking about response. Ethiopia is noted as an example where elements of this new approach are taking shape but even Ethiopia has not adopted all of these components in an integrated way, and the programming there has not been comprehensively evaluated. 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 10 December 2008 Received in revised form 29 June 2009 Accepted 5 October 2009 Available online xxxx Keywords: Food security Social protection Disaster risk reduction Food price crisis Relief to development

Introduction The 18-month period starting early in 2007 saw a rapid rise in the price of food commodities worldwide, leading to the re-emergence of global hunger and food insecurity as high-prole issues in public debate. According to the World Bank, the price crisis may have increased the number of chronically undernourished people by 44 million during 2008 alone (World Bank, 2008a), driven 100 million more people poverty, and set back development by many decades (World Bank, 2008b). Whatever else might be said about it, the price crisis has re-focused attention on hunger and food insecurity (FAO, 2008). International organizations put forward a urry of proposed responses to the price crisis, ranging from immediate actions aimed at expanding emergency relief to intensifying longer-term initiatives aimed at improving production. Yet, due to the relatively rapid onset of the price shocks, coupled with the uncertain time horizon of the crisis, the current situation dees neat classication in terms of either longevity (phrased as transitory or chronic) or response (often phrased as humanitarian or development). The architecture of response has been, once again, organized around this bifurcation and the somewhat articial programmatic distinc-

tion made between transitory and chronic food insecurity leaves major gaps that will likely hinder a holistic and effective response. This paper takes a step back from the rush to respond to the food price crisis in 2008 in order to review issues related to the conceptual and programmatic fuzziness around linking responses to the multi-dimensional problems that characterize food insecurity. After reviewing the set of responses suggested for dealing with the price crisis, and noting this tendency of bifurcation, we suggest a framework of that incorporates both social protection (SP) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) to deal with elements of food insecurity that may be both transitory and chronic, and which deals with both causes and effects concurrently. The paper draws heavily on a contribution by the authors to the International Food Security Forum on Rethinking Food Security Responses in Humanitarian Crises, held in Rome in April 2008.1 That meeting was called by humanitarian NGOs and UN agencies at a time that coincided with the zenith of food price levels and the global outburst of media attention to the resulting crisis. While most of the organizations at the Forum intervene in multiple ways, part of the rationale for holding the Forum was the recognition that existing patterns of response and the overall architecture of assistance to hunger and food insecurity are inadequate, or not t for

q Adapted from a much longer paper Rethinking Food Security in Humanitarian Response presented to the Food Security Forum, Rome, April 1618, 2008. * Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 617 627 3423; fax: +1 617 627 3428.

1 The emphasis here is on national and international humanitarian agenciesNGOs and the UN. Many of the same observations apply to national governments and donor-led initiatives.

0306-9192/$ - see front matter 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.foodpol.2009.10.002

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purpose in the words of the original communiqu from the Forum (CARE/Oxfam, 2008). The food security problem in context Even prior to 2008, the annual number of humanitarian crises had been rising, with clear implications for food security. A recent paper by the Good Humanitarian Donorship initiative noted that humanitarian crises are on the increase in terms of frequency, scope and complexity. From 1990 to 2005, ofcial humanitarian spending by DAC members increased fourfoldfrom US$2.3 billion to $8.2 billion. . .[and] these trends will probably continue (Good Humanitarian Donor Initiative, 2007, p. 1). The number of conict-emergencies had arguably leveled off (at least in terms of recent appeals in the UNs consolidated appeals process), but the number of people affected by conict had increased, and there is little question that the incidence of non-conict emergencies has also risen. Fewer people are dying in emergencies than a decade ago but these people are surviving to lead lives of increased chronic food insecurity and impaired development (Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, 2008). While not all of these crises would be described as food emergencies, virtually all of them impact the food security of affected populations. In addition, other threats to food security have achieved greater prominence. Climate change has already aggravated existing production and consumption constraints in food insecure countries and will continue to do so. The knock-on effects of climate change (such as intensied natural resource conict) are increasingly recognized risks as well. Globalized markets have meant that virtually no one was immune to the price rises of the past two years. Moreover, most of the worlds chronically food insecure are net food purchasers, not net-sellers, which means that higher prices will hurt, not help them (USDA, 2008). The causes of the increase in prices are complex, and have been discussed extensively elsewhere (see Benson et al., 2008; World Bank, 2008c; UN High Level Task Force, 2008). In short, they include: increasing global demand for meat and dairy products; the rising cost of oil and hence agricultural inputs; the increased (and subsidized) usage of maize or corn for biofuel; slowing growth in agricultural yields; shorter-term production drops in some major producer countries due to unfavorable weather; interest rates, dollar depreciation, long-term declines in global food stocks and, at least for a period of time earlier in 2008, a temporary movement during the rst half of 2008 of capital from stock markets and nancial instruments to commodities (Heady and Fan, 2008). The rapid increase in prices provoked a series of responses, both popular (food riots) and policy (banning exports, attempting to implement price controls). While the price of most food commodities has declined since April/May of 2008, most predictions suggest that prices will remain well above 2005 levels in ination-adjusted terms for the foreseeable future (FAO, 2008; OECD, 2008). The net result of these dynamics is that the underlying vulnerability of food insecure populations (including price volatility) is likely to increase. Proposals for response 2008 This latest food price shock is not uncharted territory there was a simultaneous global food price crisis and energy crisis in 1974, and less acute price spikes since that highlighted the vulnerability of certain economies to food price shocks. However, it is a less familiar topic to many contemporary policy makers than other shocks or risks to food security. There is little indication that past responses which among other things were heavily reliant on relatively cheap and historically abundant food aid will be adequate to meet the challenge of the contemporary reality. The proposals

for addressing the causes and impacts of the current crisis include a host of short- and long-term responses, and can be summarized very quickly from several major sources (Delgado, 2008; von Braun, 2008; FAO, 2008; UN High Level Task Force, 2008). The short-term responses can be summarized in the following way. Early, visible international actions included a series of contributions to ll the gap in the food aid budget of the World Food Programme (WFP) (such as Saudi Arabias unprecedented contribution of US$500 million in May 2008, as part of WFPs appeal for US$755 million to compensate for the increased costs of food and fuel), mainly intended to support on-going emergency response as a short-term reaction to the crisis (WFP, 2008). There was also attention across the NGO world to strengthening programs that address the nutritional status of infants, children and women targeted feeding programs, school feeding, and micronutrient programs. At the same time, governments enacted a range of rapid policy changes that often included some combination of easing market restrictions like price controls, tariffs or export bans, and releasing reserve stocks or subsidizing basic food stuffs for the poorest groups.2 These actions were often combined with interventions aimed at improving immediate production through lifting import restrictions/taxes on agricultural inputs (e.g., fertilizers and improved seeds) and investing in subsidies for inputs. A bill introduced into the US Congress aimed at Global Food Security addresses both the short-term problem through increased provision of emergency aid for food, while addressing the food price issue almost entirely through renewed support to agricultural development.3 In some countries, proposals were introduced that addressed both short-term and longer-term problems. For example, in Kenya, an inter-agency coordinating group devised a multi-faceted program including cash and/or food for work transfers focusing on food insecure groups, but aimed at improving productivity; nutritional surveillance and management of acute malnutrition through therapeutic and supplementary feeding; improving the diet of the urban poor through vegetable production in slum areas; improved livestock disease surveillance, and provision of assistance to pastoralists who have already been forced out of pastoralism (KFSSG/ FAO, 2008). Some of the proposed response frameworks, notably the UN Comprehensive Program of Action (UN High Level Panel, 2008; the FAO Initiative on Soaring Food Prices (FAO, 2008), the World Bank Global Food Crisis Response Program (Delgado, 2008), and the Road Map to End Global Hunger (2009) proposed by a coalition of mainly US non-governmental organizations, also prescribe safety net interventions to address consumption shortfalls beyond the current year, recognizing the chronic nature of much of the food insecurity problem. Though promising, the bulk of the emphasis remains on the short-term responses described above.4 Thus, while there is the potential for a robust response in the short-term and a recognition of long-term underlying causes, there is relatively little that is new in terms of a road map for dealing with the chronic nature of the food insecurity problem, for protecting consumption and assets beyond a short-term response, or for making livelihoods

2 The Government of Ethiopia, for example, utilized stocks in the Ethiopia Food Security Reserve, to dampen the effects of the price increases on urban consumers, particularly in Addis Ababa. 3 The Lugar/Casey sponsored Global Food Security Act of 2008. While a conventional response in the sense being discussed here, the bill was actually a major break-through in terms of proposing US funding for local and regional purchase of food aid. At the time of writing, it remained before the US Senate. 4 Given that the crisis itself, at least in its most extreme form, was relatively shortlived, some observers may deem the emphasis on short-term responses as appropriate. The point is, however, that these short-term responses did not address any of the longer-term causes and indeed did not address the causes of the short-term price spike and even the post-crisis equilibrium prices remains considerably above 5-year averages for many commodities in many markets.

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more resilient and less vulnerable to the next shock or crisis. Some of this road map was already in place, in the form of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), Millennium Development Goal (MDG) strategies, or National Food and Nutrition policies. Thus the set of responses proposed to the food price crisis largely mirrors past responses, albeit on a larger, more-urgent scale. After a period of marked neglect, longer-term investment in food security, particularly in Africa, is focusing more on agricultural production. While part of the current proposals, some of this renewed interest in agriculture pre-dates the food price crisis. Several inter-governmental programs in Africa, as well as initiatives by private foundations focus heavily on agriculture. However, these interventions tend to focus on areas of relatively higher potential and while they address the underlying causes of food insecurity, they make no explicit linkages with humanitarian response. The resurgent importance of agriculture to food security and rural development more broadly was reected most recently in the World Banks (2008c) World Development Report. In 2008, these responses have been framed as efforts to improve investment in agricultural research, both by government donors and private rms. Activities include increasing support to smallholder farmers (via technological development and improved extension services) and addressing a host of institutional constraints, such as access to inputs (e.g., land, water, and other natural resources), markets, and nancial services. Longer-term responses also include addressing gender inequities, global trade inequities and other structural constraints in smallholder agriculture (von Braun, 2008). At the policy level, there is a push to develop a global consensus on biofuels and to move as quickly as possible to second generation (cellulosebased, not grain-based) biofuels; as well as a push to conclude a new WTO Agreement on Agriculture that addresses export subsidies and food aid and, nally, to strengthen information and monitoring systems and improve global food marketing. To broaden the discussion beyond this relatively bifurcated response, we analyze some gaps in food security response. We then suggest a way to address critical elements of the gap. Continuing gaps While short-term efforts have protected lives in many humanitarian operations, few viable strategies have emerged that support the transition between short-term and longer-term responses. It was at least partially this gap that the CARE/Oxfam communiqu was addressing. Acute crises are presumed to be short-lived, but often become protracted operations that continue to recycle short-term responses over a multi-year period (ProVention/ALNAP, 2007). Several specic issues emerge: A programming framework has yet to emerge The conceptual and programmatic linkage between transitory and chronic food insecurity was classically framed in terms of the relief-to-development continuum (Buchanan-Smith and Maxwell, 1994).5 Originating largely from the response to drought disasters and other climatically-triggered slow-onset emergencies in Africa in the 1980s or early 1990s, the continuum presumed that crises have a distinct beginning and end, and that the normative direction for programming was to transition from emergency re5 Devereux (2006) notes that transitory should not be confused with acute a term that implies a degree of severity. Transitory and chronic imply a temporal dimension. Transitory food insecurity in this case refers to a sudden (and often precipitous) drop in the ability to purchase or grow enough food to meet physiological requirements for good health and activity (Barrett and Sahn, 2001). It is of course possible to have both chronic and transitory food insecurity in varying degrees of severity.

sponse (relief) to dealing with chronic problems (development) as quickly as possible. It soon became clear that, even in natural disasters, progression towards development was not such a linear process, and that progress might even be backwards (towards crisis rather than away from it). And of course, little of this theory applied in complex emergencies. By the late 1990s, the continuum idea was discredited analytically, and was replaced by the notion of a contiguum a variation that recognized that programming can take place simultaneously, or contiguously, and that the progression from relief to development was not linear. Conceptually, the understanding of vulnerability has moved beyond continuum thinking, to focusing on hazards, exposure and capacity (Macrae and Harmer, 2004), but a corresponding programming framework has yet to emerge. Operationally, the recent rediscovery of nutrition crises (since the Niger crisis in 2005) has moved thinking towards problems like severe acute malnutrition that cut across conventional conceptual or funding windows such as relief or development. Though theory has evolved, much of the response is still constructed as though food insecurity particularly in emergencies is straightforwardly a short-term problem of inadequate consumption. While this is indeed part of the story, the problem is often protracted and goes far beyond just inadequate consumption. The structure of funding overrides programming concerns The funding problem long recognized, but with relatively few institutional changes to date in the way donor agencies are organized is simple: many donor agencies tend to have an emergency window and a development or non-emergency window. While there have been some attempts to capture programmatic activities such as livelihood protection or rehabilitation, these have often eventually ended up being subsumed under one or the other of the two major donor windows and are traditionally quite under-funded. Reconstruction and rehabilitation did not even turn up as an entry in ofcial ODA gures until 2004, even though these activities were being discussed much earlier (OECD, 2006). Transitory food insecurity that is clearly linked with an identied causal factor or dened shock, tends to draw greater attention and greater levels of resources than does chronic food insecurity that might actually be a more serious problem in terms of scale and severity, but which is not clearly dened in time or linked to a specic cause or shock (Devereux, 2006), leading to the phenomenon one observer labeled the normalization of crisis (Bradbury, 2000). The current system is fragmented According to a review of global humanitarian action, current trends and patterns suggest the emergence of a new humanitarian architecture (Development Initiatives, 2006). There are potentials and challenges in the arrival of new players and new kinds of resources. But the international system for assistance is a fragmented one with weak coordination between humanitarian response undertaken to protect food security in the short-term (whether in the classic form of actual provisioning, or other means of protecting assets, production, or marketing) and longer-term efforts to address underlying causes of food insecurity, with early recovery and transition only slightly better (Good Humanitarian Donorship Initiative, 2007). Tensions arise between different agencies or even within the same agency if it has multiple mandates over linkages and responsibilities. But more classically, different agencies tend to act in isolation from each other, according to their mandates and capacities. This is exacerbated by uncertainty about where and how decisions get made, what policies and approaches

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are needed, and who is responsible for doing what. Coordination mechanisms either national government-led, or the UN cluster system have been developed, but they remain limited, do not address the issues raised here, for the most part are country-specic and, to some degree, they maintain the bifurcation discussed above.6 Given the emerging consensus that actions undertaken in emergencies must meet current needs and also tackle pre-existing problems, humanitarian action now appears to include a wide range of goals (Webb and Roger, 2003; Webb and Gross, 2006; SabatesWheeler et al., 2008), including:  Meeting minimum consumption needs.  Stabilizing consumption in the medium term.  Laying the ground for enhanced future consumption in terms of both quality and quantity.  Repairing or replacing the local stock of damaged/lost productive assets.  Enhancing the productivity of current assets (including human capital, to achieve higher labor productivity).  Protecting income from a range of potential future hazards.  Providing basic social services.  Enabling diversication of livelihood strategies and assets to reduce risks.  Protecting rights. In light of both the critique of current capacity in food security response, and an initial assessment of the proposed responses to the food price crisis, one of the greatest remaining obstacles to successfully addressing food insecurity is the lack of a common, integrated framework for analysis and programmatic response, and poor integration of short-term and longer-term interventions to address these issues. The following section lays out one possible means of addressing this issue.

Ways forward a different programming framework From the discussion above, it is clear that one of the most stubborn of challenges facing humanitarian agencies working in food security has been the inability to satisfactorily link adequate responses to chronic and transitory food insecurity two related, but etiologically different problems. Several elements must be incorporated into a common integrated approach to analyze and act on the multi-dimensional problem of food insecurity. Recent conceptual work has accomplished some of the necessary integration, under two related schools of thought with roots in the literature on vulnerability and risk: the literature on SP/Social Risk Management (SRM) (World Bank, 2001; Holzmann and Jrgensen, 2000; Ellis et al., 2009; Sabates-Wheeler et al., 2008) and the literature on DRR (UN/ISDR, 2005; Twigg 2007; UN/ISDR, 2009). Both SP/SRM and DRR tend to posit that more proactive management of risks and more predictable accounting for needs would reduce the need for humanitarian response. The programming framework proposed in this section draws on the conceptual strands of these two literatures and, most importantly, tries to provide a clearer guide for translating concepts into practice. By applying intervention options under both the SP/SRM
6 The cluster has improved efforts to improve information and leadership, but it is too soon to make any assessment of improved accountability or performance. No one has specically assessed whether the cluster system helps to address the gap between short-term and longer-term responses, but given that Early Recovery is a different cluster, with a different lead agency, this would appear to be dependent on individual styles and cooperation at the eld level. See Stoddard et al. (2007); also see Forced Migration Review 29 (December 2007) for various articles an informal early assessment of the cluster system and other UN reforms.

or DRR umbrellas to address diverse objectives at different points of time, a comprehensive approach to programming emerges. These interventions are often required in combination to address underlying causes and their more immediate effects, and to serve both shorter-term and longer-term purposes. Labels abound, and both SP and DRR have different variants. SP/ SRM is an umbrella term used primarily by the World Bank to describe a broad range of initiatives and transfers intended to reduce the economic and social vulnerability of the poor and food insecure. The concept of SRM evolved early this century as a way to broaden the SP agenda from what was largely equated with consumption-based safety nets to a more holistic framework, centered around notions of risk and the instruments (public, market, and private sector) needed to mitigate risk (World Bank, 2000). In practice, though, SP/SRM in many countries remains focused on ways to address only the consequences or outcomes rather than root causes of a problem. This is one critique made by Devereux and Sabates-Wheeler (2004), who suggest that the framework itself must be broadened to incorporate transformative elements that will tackle the underlying social and political and human rights dynamics that are often at the root of the shocks that SP/SRM tries to mitigate. DRR tends to emphasize hazards rather than outcomes, and aims to reduce the likelihood that shocks will develop from these hazards, or, if they do, to reduce the likelihood of damage. By including risk reduction strategies, DRR includes measures that were typically outside traditional social protection frameworks such as ood control, but also includes sound macroeconomic policy, livelihoods diversication, and investments in health and education (e.g., DFID, 2006). DRR also incorporates risk mitigation strategies to reduce the impact of a risk should it occur. These strategies include a range of interventions such as formal and informal insurance, employment guarantees, asset transfers, and other investments in order to spread risk. Good early warning and local contingency planning and preparedness are important elements of risk reduction and mitigation strategies. Lastly, risk transfer mechanisms are a response to a risk that has materialized, and are intended to build resilience; alleviate suffering; and prevent the disposal of assets, the curtailing of consumption, and other harmful responses to a shock. In that sense, risk transfer is similar in intent to the provision of a social safety net or in some cases, emergency response (World Bank, 2001; UN/ISDR, 2004, 2009; DFID, 2006). Like SRM and SP, DRR in practice tends to have a much narrower scope. While SP/SRM tends to focus on the effects of a shock including, but not limited to food insecurity DRR in practice tends to emphasize reducing the underlying risks. The practice of SP/SRM has been more focused on income shocks, whereas DRR has emphasized the reduction of climatic, tectonic and environmental hazards (UN/ISDR, 2009). Neither particularly focused on conict or complex emergencies. Conceptually, both SP/SRM and DRR are fairly holistic frameworks that have the potential to inform the design of food security interventions, but there has not yet been an equally holistic framework that links this theory to programming. An alternative way to think about these relationships and the kinds of programming that are appropriate to each as well as the linkages required to ensure that an explicit focus on food security is successful is depicted in Fig. 1. Rather than suggesting that short-term and long term are synonymous with relief and development. Fig. 1 suggests a programming framework with both a temporal dimension and a dimension related to the programmatic objectives: addressing outcomes (or symptoms) of food insecurity or addressing causes of food insecurity. Some of the categories suggested by Fig. 1 look fairly familiar: dealing with symptoms in the short-term is very similar to the classic denition of emergency response; addressing underlying

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Fig. 1. Situating programmatic responses to food insecurity.

causes in the longer-term sounds a lot like the denition of sustainable development. But the other two categories suggested by Fig. 1 incorporate elements of SP and disaster risk management. While protecting consumption has often been viewed only as a short-term category of programming, the protection of consumption is clearly a protracted programming concern in many contexts. Providing a safety net that protects consumption in the longerterm (hence protecting productive assets that might otherwise be subject to distress sales) is one of the major functions of SP. Other elements of SP are also highlighted by a concern with protecting food security as an outcome in the longer-term. Likewise, addressing the causes of food insecurity has long been thought to be possible only in the longer-term. The emphasis on disaster risk mitigation and reduction equally dees clear temporal denition. Mitigating the risk of certain kinds of hazards or causal factors of food security crises in the short-term, and insurance strategies that transfer some part of the risk of the impact of shocks to a broader group, are two of the major elements of interventions suggested by DRR strategies. Other elements of risk reduction or risk management may address longer-term causes or longer-term interventions like diversifying livelihoods. Many if not most current interventions (including those put forward as the response to the food price crisis of 2008) tend to emphasize one or the other of these, but usually not both. Some of the more innovative thinking about transformative SP also addresses the issue of rights and preventing social exclusion (Devereux and Sabates-Wheeler, 2004), an issue largely not immediately addressed in much of the DRR literature. While there has been increasing recognition given to both SP and DRR as categories of programs in their own right, they are still new categories risk prevention does not show up in ofcial ODA accounting until 2005, and then only in miniscule amounts (OECD, 2006). And with one exception (Maunder, 2006), these have not been put into a single programmatic framework in such a way as to enable program planners to think about their relationships. It should be noted that the boundaries between programmatic activities in Fig. 1 are deliberately blurred. It is not clear, for example, how long emergency food assistance has to be continued before it becomes more like a safety net program than an emergency program. This distinction has more to do with the predictability of the problem rather than merely longevity of the intervention. Likewise, some activities can protect consumption and mitigate the risk of a shock at the same time. The point is not to dene boundaries but to highlight objectives and actions.

An example Though this kind of an integrated strategy has not been implemented on a broad scale, most of the programmatic elements described in Fig. 1 are taking shape in Ethiopia, albeit not necessarily in a harmonized or mutually reinforcing way. Ethiopia has long-standing emergency response capacity (undergoing signicant institutional change in 2008). The Productive Safety Nets Program (PSNP), introduced in 2005, addresses the predictable needs of chronically vulnerable groups who require assistance during the hunger gap season even in good years. It provides support in the form of an employment guarantee (food and/or cash either through an employment guarantee or by direct transfer, depending on circumstances). Labor-decit households qualify for free transfers in the form of direct cash or food support. Initial evaluations of the PSNP focus on targeting and linkages to other food security programs that are intended to promote the development of sustainable livelihoods (Devereux et al., 2006), and although the results are somewhat mixed, the intent of the PSNP is clear. Linkages with other food security programs have not been fully realized and, without these linkages, the livelihood package that is needed to contribute to graduation from food insecurity is not always being delivered. In fact, one report cautions that graduation processes are complex and cannot simply be delivered through a safety net program alone (RHVP, 2007, p. 7). Since 2004, the Government of Ethiopia, the World Food Programme, and donors have been exploring the concept of risk nancing as one form of risk mitigation and transfer. This was initiated by a joint WFP/World Bank pilot of pricing drought risk through the international insurance market. The insurance policy, piloted by WFP and partner Axa Re in 2006, was triggered by a quantitative index of livelihood damage based on rainfall decit. It would result in a payout to the Government which in turn would provide farmers early with cash payments in the event that a severe drought was predicted. This has since evolved into a risk nancing component linked to the PSNP with the goal of generating enough contingency funds (through donor commitments and possibly self-insurance) to cover up to 6.7 million people in the case of a severe drought (Hess et al., 2006). This next phase will involve national level scale up of community-level contingency planning, capacity building and better early warning systems. The partnership has already developed funding triggers based on actuarial analysis of rainfall decit and livelihood damage.

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The emerging Ethiopia model suggests programmatic interventions that parallel the components of Fig. 1. The PSNP is designed to address chronic food insecurity by protecting access to adequate food and by preventing the loss of assets. The risk nancing program is a unique attempt of the humanitarian community to mitigate and transfer the risks of damage from one prevalent set of hazards, determining in advance of a crisis which segments of a population are at risk from what sources, and intervening with mechanisms that are able to avert or mitigate a food security crisis before it occurs. Already existing humanitarian response capacity, and elements of development programming and programs known as the S-PSNP or support to the PSNP fulll the more classic relief/development elements. Discussion: responses that are t for purpose While the Ethiopia example comes close to approximating the programmatic model suggested by Fig. 1, the idea has only really been piloted in a few locations in the country, focuses primarily only on one hazard (drought), and has yet to be evaluated for impact. The year of the WFP/Axa Re experiment, 2006, did not see a major drought shock and the major shock of 2008 the rapid rise in food prices was not a hazard that the risk reduction program had predicted. The demands on the PSNP rose signicantly in 2008 and the emergency response mechanism which had been scaled back in favor of an expanded PSNP had to be signicantly ramped up as well. There was a much greater demand for food aid in-kind and decreased demand for cash, given that the price of food had increased threefold, while the cash allocation had only been increased by fraction of that (FEWSNET, 2008). Thus, while many elements of the programmatic framework described by Fig. 1 are either in place or on the drawing board in Ethiopia, and while individual elements have been evaluated, there has not been any evaluation of the whole system.7 However, when and where the approach described in Fig. 1 can be fully operationalized, it will offer a unique opportunity to evaluate the entire programming model. Several other questions are implied by the approach suggested here, but which have yet to be addressed. First, DRR efforts to date have been focused heavily on natural disasters. Yet much contemporary food insecurity is caused by conict and complex emergencies. Agencies have to intervene in such a way as to provide an impartial response to life-threatening situations, yet deal with vulnerability and risk that is mostly political. Political vulnerability is dealt with in some approaches to SP; it is left out of most of the DRR literature. Second, the locus for action in these arenas is not clear. Classically, both SP and risk reduction are primarily the domain of states, yet humanitarian agencies are often called upon to operate in places where states either too weak to respond, or else as just noted are a belligerent party in a conict that is a causal factor in the crisis. But other actors are clearly involved, including donors and agencies and increasingly, private-sector companies and militaries. Individual agencies operating on the ground may be able to adopt a programming framework, but are clearly not going to be able to take it to scale without signicant collaboration. These observations call for a set of principles that may be informed by classic humanitarian principles, but which have to adapt to a different operating environment (Gentilini, 2009). We have deliberately limited this paper to a conceptual and programmatic framework, and have not addressed the normative framework for operating in conict or political crises.
7 A multi-year effort at institutional reform and the development of a new Disaster Management Policy in Ethiopia is close to completion, so many elements discussed here have been extensively reviewed, but their actual application on the ground has yet to be evaluated comprehensively.

Third, we have not addressed the challenges of competing objectives of dealing with protection and entitlement on the one hand, and incentives and sustainability on the other. And fourth, we have not addressed the obvious problem of the implications for donor exibility, and the need to enable agencies to respond to changing conditions, varying timeframes, and multiple objectives. These are clearly important additional considerations to addressing the problem of the bifurcation of food security responses. Improved programmatic linkages between humanitarian response (classically dened as short-term or transitory) and promoting sustainable livelihoods (classically dened as long-term) have been limited. This paper has laid out a programming model that suggests a multi-dimensional approach to addressing food insecurity that involves protecting consumption and assets, and preventing or mitigating the impact of shocks, both idiosyncratic and covariate. This approach calls for greater analytical capacity and greater nimbleness on the part of government, donors and agencies alike. Analytical tools are improving, but must be brought into full usage. Analysis of context, response options, and impact are all critical and donors must be willing to pay for the better quality information derived. Programs will need to be exible and multi-faceted both in objectives and in time-frame and agency staff training needs to reect goal-orientation rather than past experience. Collaboration and coordination sometimes among agencies but also with host-country governments must also be improved. Agencies, donors and host governments must be geared up to this broader task to be t for purpose. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank CARE International and Oxfam for permission to publish this more concise version of that paper. References
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Please cite this article in press as: Maxwell, D., et al. Fit for purpose? Rethinking food security responses in protracted humanitarian crises. Food Policy (2009), doi:10.1016/j.foodpol.2009.10.002