Building More Resilient Pathways to Prosperity COMMUNITY PERSPECTIVES from BURKINA FASO and ETHIOPIA
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Building more resilient pathways to prosperity COMMUNITY PERSPECTIVES FROM BURKINA FASO AND ETHIOPIA About this guide Catholic Relief Services (CRS) developed a series The Resilience through Enhanced Adaptation, of eight briefs to illustrate how CRS’ food security Action-learning, and Partnership (REAAP) program programs have built absorptive, adaptive and is funded through the USAID Office of U.S. Foreign transformative capacities of agricultural livelihoods Disaster Assistance, Global Climate Change, and to help individuals, communities, and systems Feed the Future initiatives. REAAP is a three-year address the challenges of recurrent shocks and program carried out in East and West Hararghe chronic stresses. The agricultural livelihoods zones of Meta, Fedis, Midhega Tolla, Mieso, Tulo, components of the CRS resilience intervention and Oda Bultum woredas in Oromia region of investment package focuses on livelihood Ethiopia. The program is specifically designed to protection in humanitarian emergencies contexts sustainably increase resilience and reduce long- while promoting economically and environmentally term vulnerability to current and future climate sustainable and diversified livelihood growth. change and climate-related shocks and stresses in CRS achieves this through integrated and vulnerable communities. sequenced approaches which initially save The resilience briefs allow CRS and partner staff livelihoods, progress to strengthen livelihoods, and to identify actual examples and to learn from ultimately build shock-resilient livelihoods, helping success by documenting in real-time what works households and communities to stay the course to strengthen resilience. Select examples of along CRS’ Pathway to Prosperity. absorptive, adaptive and transformative capacities The Families Achieving Sustainable Outcomes from ongoing FASO and REAAP programs are (FASO) United States Agency for International used to illustrate the promising practices and Development (USAID) Title II development program approaches as well as challenges to achieving implements integrated programming in the health transformative change within a three- to five-year districts of Tougouri in Namentenga Province in the period. The briefs also provide an overview of CRS’ Centre Nord Region; Manni in Gnagna Province; and progress in shaping and implementing a vision for Gayeri in Komondjari Province in the East Region in building resilience in new or existing programs. Burkina Faso. FASO is five-year program operating Finally, the briefs can help program staff to in an area with reoccurring weather-related identify potential areas to influence systems and shocks and stressors. While it was not designed structures by locating entry points, including “The to be a resilience-focused program, it nonetheless Family House” approach and keyhole gardens, integrated the relevant factors to successfully which can help national policies and institutions contribute to well-being outcomes. The FASO briefs better integrate disaster risk reduction, climate demonstrate the opportunity for developmental smart agricultural practices and adaptations, and programs to align more with the principles in development approaches. Building Resilience to Recurrent Crisis: USAID Policy and Program Guidance1. 1 https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1870/USAIDResiliencePolicyGuidanceDocument.pdf Table of contents ABOUT THIS GUIDE ......................................................................................................................... I BUILDING MORE RESILIENT PATHWAYS TO PROSPERITY IN TOUGOURI, MANNI, AND GAYERI HEALTH DISTRICTS IN BURKINA FASO ............................................................ 1 ENHANCING SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTION — ADAPTATIONS FOR RECOVERY IN A DEGRADED ENVIRONMENT ..................................................................................................... 7 RESILIENT PATHWAYS THROUGH WOMEN’S ACCESS TO RESOURCES AND SERVICES ................................................................................................................................13 A GENDER-TRANSFORMATIVE RESILIENCE-BASED APPROACH TO BUILDING FUNCTIONAL ORGANIZATIONS ................................................................................................19 BUILDING RESILIENT COMMUNITIES ....................................................................................... 23 ENHANCING SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTION AT THE LANDSCAPE LEVEL ......................29 FOSTERING MORE EQUITABLE DECISION MAKING ............................................................ 33 ADVOCATING FOR NUTRITION CHANGE ...............................................................................38 FASO PROGRAM | RESILIENCE BRIEF 1 FASO Photo by CRS Burkino Faso staff Building more resilient pathways to prosperity in Tougouri, Manni, and Gayeri health districts in Burkina Faso SYNOPSIS While the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Burkinabe to climatic and environmental shocks that affect Families Achieving Sustainable Outcomes (FASO) livelihoods, as well as strengthening community Program was not designed to be a resilience- attitudes toward change, collaboration, organization, focused project, it nonetheless integrated the decision-making, and resource management. relevant factors to successfully contribute to FASO interventions reinforce the community-level well-being outcomes.1 Within the FASO Program structures and processes that enable households context, resilience takes the form of strengthening and communities to mitigate, deal with, and recover community and household abilities to respond from shocks and stresses in the health districts of Tougouri, Manni, and Gayeri. 1 The FASO Title II development program implements integrated programming in the health districts of Tougouri in Namentenga Province in the Centre Nord Region; Manni in Gnagna Province; and Gayeri in Komondjari Province in the East Region. Resilience is a new approach, and few existing tools or frameworks exist to measure its impact. Resilience is highly contextual, and no set of indicators or activities sufficiently captures resilience on a global basis. FASO strategy for building resilience capacity. poor to poor (the build phase), farmers increase Resilience is the capacity to cope with stresses skill building in production systems; savings and shocks,2 including the major stress of climate and loans; and linking production with markets. change. Natural shocks—including cyclical drought Table 1 demonstrates how FASO agricultural and and seasonal floods—contribute to food insecurity livelihood activities align with the CRS Agriculture in the health districts of Tougouri, Manni, and and Livelihood (AL) theory of change building Gayeri. FASO households frequently identified five blocks for P2P farmer segments. specific shocks, including: Scaling financial education and services for • Loss of crops and livestock due to drought vulnerable households to engage in agricultural • Loss of livestock due to illness market systems. Community-based groups such as savings and internal lending communities (SILCs) • Increase in food prices have proven successful in building the social • Increase in cost of inputs and financial capital of recover farmer segment • Vulnerability to droughts, floods, and storms households in FASO areas. Through the SILCs, recover farmer segment households have learned Resilience interventions integrate livelihoods, to come together to pool financial resources, solve disaster risk reduction, and climate change problems, and learn new financial literacy skills, all reduction approaches across recover, build, of which strengthen the social bonding so critical and grow farmer segments of the Pathway to to vulnerable households. Strengthening household Prosperity. CRS’ Pathway to Prosperity (P2P) assets fosters confidence, especially in women, model (based on USAID’s Pathway out of Poverty) and empowers households to undertake riskier but presents households with a course from the more productive and diversified livelihoods (e.g., vulnerable recover stage through build to grow, parboiled rice marketing and poultry production). by delivering layered and sequenced packages of interventions to groups and households according The SILC groups also provide an entry point for to their economic status, systematically helping building awareness and changing the behavior them move from vulnerability to economic of FASO communities with respect to nutrition prosperity and resilience.3 behavior, coping strategies, and women’s empowerment. Fostering community groups Within the FASO project area, the farmer to develop relationships to other communities segment is mostly very poor, and in the recover (e.g., vegetable marketing), organizations (e.g., phase, interventions focus on ensuring that tool committees), and service providers (e.g., households can access, consolidate, and protect agriculture input dealers) can further build key productive assets. As they move from very community resilience by broadening social as well as business ties. DEFINING RESILIENCE Social cohesion and strong inter-household USAID defines resilience as “the ability of bonds within FASO communities foster people, households, communities, countries spontaneous cooperative acts, which ensure and systems to mitigate, adapt to and that struggling households do not drop below a recover from shocks and stresses in a manner normative level during a crisis. Numerous FASO that reduces chronic vulnerability and communities and households