Impact Evaluation Of
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Impact evaluation of the WFP Enhancing Resilience to Natural Disasters and the Effects of Climate Change programme with a specific focus on the resilience dimension ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This study was done by an independent (external) research team. The authors would like however to thank Christa Räder (Country Representative, WFP), Ashraful Amin, Manas Rudra and Mafizul Islam (WFP Bangladesh Country Office), Iqbal Hossain (WFP Barisal Suboffice), and Anna Law and Krishna Krishnamurthy (WFP Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific), for their support during the preparation of the work and for their useful comments on an earlier version of this report. This study was made possible through the generous contribution of the Government of Sweden through the C-ADAPT programme. The Climate Adaptation Management and Innovation Initiative (C-ADAPT) is an initiative funded by the Government of Sweden’s fast-track climate finance that allows WFP and partners to explore innovative climate-induced food insecurity analyses, programmes and best practices, with the goal to help individuals, communities and governments meet their food and nutrition needs under a changing climate. Research team: Christophe Béné (Lead Researcher) - International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT); Ferdous Jahan, Fahim S. Chowdhury, Mamun Rashid, Sabbir A. Dhali – Development Research Initiative (DRI) © World Food Programme, 2016 ISBN: 978-984-34-1033-7 Cover photo: ©WFP/Ranak Martin (All photographs) Designed by Mohammad Inamul Shahriar Printed by Printcraft Company Ltd. Impact evaluation of the WFP Enhancing Resilience to Natural Disasters and the Effects of Climate Change programme with a specific focus on the resilience dimension Christophe Béné, Ferdous Jahan, Fahim S. Chowdhury, Mamun Rashid, Sabbir A. Dhali, CONTENTS Acronyms iv Executive summary 5 1. Introduction and background 11 2. The enhancing resilience programme 15 3. Conceptual framework 19 4. Methodology 25 5. Results 37 6. Discussion 51 7. Conclusion 56 8. References 58 ACRONYMS ATT Average Treatment effect on the Treatment group BDT Bangladesh Taka CSI Coping Strategy Index ER Enhancing Resilience HFIAS Household Food Insecurity Access Score HH Household IFPRI International Food Policy Research Institute IDS Institute of Development Studies LGED Local Government Engineering Department LLP Local Level Planning NDRI Natural Disaster Risk Index NGO Non-governmental Organization M&E Monitoring & Evaluation PSM Propensity Score Matching PTSD Post-traumatic Stress Disorder ToC Theory of Change UzDMC Upazila Disaster Management Committee VAM Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping WFP World Food Programme iv EXECUTIVE SUMMARY EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Enhancing Resilience to Natural Disasters and the Effects of Climate Change (ER) programme is a joint initiative by the Government of Bangladesh and the World Food Programme (WFP) that aims at addressing the vulnerability of the rural population (especially the ultra-poor) exposed to natural disasters and to the effects of climate change. It was started in 2011 in two distinct parts of the country: the river erosion prone areas of the northwest and the cyclone and salinity affected coastal belt in the south. Through a 3-year cycle of support and training activities one of its main expected outcomes is to strengthen the resilience of the targeted communities. Although several components of the ER programme have already been internally and externally assessed, the specific objective of building the resilience of the targeted population has not. In this context, the WFP office in Bangladesh commissioned an evaluation of the ER programme in 2015, The WFP office with the particular objective of assessing the programme’s in Bangladesh effectiveness in terms of improving beneficiaries’ resilience. commissioned an This report presents the key findings of this evaluation. evaluation of the ER The assessment draws partially on recent conceptual advances made in the understanding of resilience in the programme in 2015, context of food security, where resilience is understood as “the with the particular ability of individuals, households, communities, institutions or higher-level systems to adequately deal with shocks and objective of assessing stressors” (the terms ‘adequately’ referring to the ability to the programme’s avoid short and longer term negative impacts). effectiveness in In the absence of any resilience baseline data, an ex-post terms of improving treatment versus control approach was adopted where the responses (outcome) and ability to recover from shock/ beneficiaries’ resilience. stressors (impact) of the treatment group (households who This report presents benefited from the programme by being participants in the the key findings of this activities) were compared to the responses and ability to recover of control households (non-recipients with similar evaluation. demographics and socioeconomic background living out of 6 Resilience is understood as the ability of individuals, households, communities, institutions or higher-level systems to adequately deal with shocks and stressors. the areas where the programme found to be similar between the idiosyncratic shocks such as has been operating). two groups, but others differed. serious illness or accident, while In particular (despite our effort to treatment households seem to be The impact evaluation was ensure that control and treatment more exposed to covariant shocks constructed around two hypotheses: groups were comparable) and stressors such as flooding (i) Hypothesis 1 at the outcome households in the treatment from excessive rainfall. On the level, ER-beneficiaries were group were observed to be other hand both groups reported expected to show lower propensity exposed to a higher number of similar levels of exposure to other to adopt detrimental (coping) shocks/stressors than those in the co-variant (in particular cyclones) responses and higher propensity control group. The nature of these and idiosyncratic shocks (such to adopt positive (adaptive/ shocks/stressors also differed as e.g. loss of small livestock) transformative) responses; slightly, with control households and showed similar self-assessed (ii) Hypothesis 2 at the more frequently affected by some levels of shock/stressor severity. impact level, ER-beneficiaries were expected to show faster recovery rates than households in the control group (everything else being equal). The evaluation exercise was implemented in four unions in the southwest region, two of which were unions where the programme had completed a full 3-year cycle (treatment unions), and the two others were unions where the ER programme had no activities (control). In these unions a total of 502 beneficiaries (treatment) and 505 non-beneficiaries (control) were selected. A series of preliminary descriptive analyses were performed to compare the treatment and control groups. Some general household characteristics were 7 Although treatment households reported to be more exposed to shocks/stressors, they appear to display a statistically lower propensity to engage in detrimental responses (including reducing food consumption; changing the type of food consumed; reducing family expenses; taking loan; and seeking assistance from community members) than the control group. Further analysis shows that, On the other hand the data did although treatment households not permit to draw any rigorous reported to be more exposed conclusions about the more positive to shocks/stressors, they (adaptive/transformative) responses, appear to display a statistically essentially because the number lower propensity to engage in of ER-beneficiaries and non- detrimental responses (including beneficiaries who did engage reducing food consumption; in these uplifting strategies changing the type of food was too small to allow the use of consumed; reducing family robust econometric analyses. expenses; taking loan; and seeking assistance from community The second hypothesis (at the members) than the control group. impact level) was tested for Finally ER-beneficiaries were the five more important shock/ also shown to be characterized This first key result, which addresses stressors, using a self-reported by a statistically higher directly our first hypothesis, was indicator of household capacity income level than the non- obtained without controlling for to recover. A Propensity Score beneficiaries (other things being household characteristics. When Matching technique was equal), as well as higher levels controlling for those characteristics, used to control for potential of saving and lower levels analysis still shows that the ER confounding factors and to of loan. A plausible scenario programme reduces the probability identify and compare these of households to engage in recovery indicators between detrimental coping strategies for treatment households and a The beneficiaries half of the 20 major shock-response pool of comparable control combinations that were tested. This households. The results indicate show faster recovery reduction is statistically significant that the score for these recovery rate from different in 7 out of these 10 combinations. indicators is systematically higher shocks than the non- For these positive results, more for the treatment (in line with our in-depth computations show Hypothesis 2) for the five shock/ beneficiaries and the that the ER programme reduces stressors considered, but that result is statistically those probabilities by 5 to 16% only one of these differences