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Is resilience a useful concept in the context of food security and nutrition programmes? Some conceptual and practical considerations

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Abstract

With the developing world increasingly exposed to severe shocks and stresses, a growing number of international development agencies have now adopted resilience building as a critical long-term objective for their programmes. This paper explores the potential for this concept in the context of food security and nutrition but the reflection extends to development interventions more generally. Resilience is a rich concept, and has at its core the notion of complex dynamic processes that aptly describes the nature and dynamics of vulnerability and changes as they affect the developing world. The paper argues that the main value of resilience lies in its integrative nature, which facilitates greater collaboration between traditionally disparate groups and communities of practices. The paper also stresses some of the key conceptual and practical challenges that we face when trying to operationalise and measure resilience.

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Notes

  1. At least four articles use the term ‘metaphor’ in relation to resilience: Carpenter et al. (2001); Pickett et al. (2004); Norris et al. (2008); Pain and Levine (2012).

  2. The diagram also shows climate change adaptation programmes, which for their large majority are aimed at strengthening the adaptive capacity of households.

  3. Pain and Levine (2012) for instance, in their analysis of livelihood trajectories in rural Afghanistan, reported a situation in which a landlord’s resilience is reinforced to the detriment of the resilience of his sharecroppers.

  4. In contrast, in social-ecological literature, the number of studies adopting a community level analysis is larger – see Berkes and Ross 2013 for a recent review.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

    Christophe Béné & Lawrence Haddad

  2. International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC, USA

    Derek Headey & Klaus von Grebmer

  3. Decision and Policy Analysis Programme, International Center for Tropical Agriculture, Cali, Colombia

    Christophe Béné

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  1. Christophe Béné
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  3. Lawrence Haddad
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  4. Klaus von Grebmer
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Correspondence to Christophe Béné.

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Béné, C., Headey, D., Haddad, L. et al. Is resilience a useful concept in the context of food security and nutrition programmes? Some conceptual and practical considerations. Food Sec. 8, 123–138 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-015-0526-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-015-0526-x

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