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Book (stand-alone)Building resilience to climate change-related and other disasters in Ethiopia
Challenges, lessons and the way forward
2022Also available in:
No results found.Ethiopia is exposed to a wide range of disasters associated with the country’s extensive dependence on rainfed subsistence agriculture, climate change, resource degradation, diverse geoclimatic and socio-economic conditions and conflicts. Drought and floods are the major challenges, but a number of other threats affect communities and livelihoods. These include conflict, desert locust, fall armyworm, frost and hail, crop pests and diseases, livestock diseases, human diseases, landslides, earthquakes, and urban and forest fires. Every source of evidence suggests that Ethiopia would feel the human and economic impacts of climate change intensely, and the impacts will only continue to grow if the country continues a business-as-usual approach to crisis response, and will not be able to manage the increasing scale of the challenges. Thus, there is call by all stakeholders for a paradigm shift in the way the country deals with communities at risk, in order to take preventive actions to reduce exposure, vulnerability and impact at local level. This requires moving away from a reactive system that solely focuses on drought and supply of life-saving humanitarian relief and emergency responses during disasters to a comprehensive proactive disaster and climate risk management approach, including climate change adaptation, among which are interventions to enhance livelihood diversification, social protection programmes and risk transfer mechanisms. Furthermore, resilient agrifood systems support should include a range of proven interventions that are context-relevant and cover the whole agrifood system, such as increase in fertilizer use where appropriate and high-yielding and drought-tolerant seeds, strengthened extension and advisory systems at the kebele (local) level through the use of farmer field schools and pastoral field schools, expansion of access to credit, livelihood diversification, risk transfer mechanism and institutional development that link short-term emergency relief to long-term development pathways. This approach is essential for building resilience to natural hazard and human-induced disasters resulting in food insecurity challenges. Much progress has been made in the last 50 years in the way of managing mainly drought disaster risks. Large-scale prevention and mitigation programmes have been designed, incorporating a focus on vulnerabilities, household asset-building, and public works for environmental rehabilitation and generation of livelihoods. Preparedness has been enhanced by the development of various policies and strategic documents for assessment and intervention, early warning and response systems, and economic, social and physical infrastructure to strengthen the local economy and household livelihoods. An attempt has also been made for humanitarian response to count on an established risk-financing. -
DocumentStabiliser le Burundi rural 2011La stabilisation des communautés rurales peut contribuer à consolider la paix au Burundi, selon la FAO. L’Organisation des Nations Unies appelle à un soutien continu en faveur des agriculteurs les plus vulnérables, tout en soulignant la nécessité de développer le potentiel économique du secteur agricole. Actuellement, l’Organisation déploie un Plan d’action pour le Burundi estimé à quelque 60 millions de dollars et ciblé sur 1 250 000 personnes sur une période de deux ans. Ce pla n a pour objectif d’accroître la production vivrière, en fournissant des semences de qualité de cultures à haut rendement, en soutenant les activités rémunératrices et en encourageant les agriculteurs à unir leurs forces pour produire des excédents commercialisables et renforcer les relations pacifiques. “Notre but est d’aider les agriculteurs à se détourner de l’agriculture de subsistance vers des formes plus viables d’agriculture”, explique Hubert Chauvet, Représentant de la FAO au Burundi.
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DocumentPromoting agricultural inputs under the Food Aid Convention to increase food production in emergency-prone developing countries 2010
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No results found.Assistance needs for the rapidly increasing emergency situations require more judicious responses on the part of donors, including the provision of critical agricultural inputs such as seeds, fertilizers and farming implements for reconstruction and recovery of the agriculture sector. The institutional framework governing food-related assistance has been at an impasse for some time, with the renegotiation of the Food Aid Convention (FAC) remaining in suspense, awaiting the conclusion of the un certain Doha Round of negotiations, although there have been fresh efforts to move the FAC process forward. The Food and Agriculture organization of the United Nations is the key agency within the multilateral system responsible for coordinating donor efforts in the rehabilitation of agriculture in the aftermath of emergencies. The Organization has a keen interest in seeing that the FAC process is concluded soon, taking on board the new realities on the ground, in particular assisting affect ed communities to resume agricultural activity and return to self-reliance. An analysis of trends in natural and human-induced disasters over the last 30 years confirms the large increase in protracted emergency situations, whereby several countries experience a food emergency year after year. In addition, many of these countries suffer serious chronic food insecurity and these two problems (the transitory and the structural) cannot be addressed separately. A stop-gap approach based on sho rt-term food assistance is not sustainable in these situations. Interventions should also aim to break the cycle of long-term structural problems feeding into greater vulnerability in the short term. Increasing donor support in the form of agricultural inputs, together with meeting immediate food needs, is critical in expediting recovery and helping agricultural communities getting back on their feet. Meeting immediate food emergency needs has become the main priority of donors with nearly 80 percent of total food aid now used for that purpose compared with well below 20 percent up to 1990. At the same time donors’ funding arrangements have become more flexible with a large majority of donors providing cash resources to facilitate local purchases and triangular transactions, as well as funds for the purchase of agricultural inputs. While support for the agriculture sector within the United Nations Consolidated Appeals Process has increased in recent years, agriculture remains he avily underfunded in relation to identified needs and other sectors, with only 41 percent of the sector’s needs being met in recent years. Overall, FAO’s efforts in rehabilitation and recovery of the agriculture sector have been compromised by a lack of adequate funding. An analysis of a multitude of arrangements governing food-related assistance (the Consultative Sub-Committee on Surplus Disposal [CSSD], World Trade Organization [WTO] and FAC) shows that although they are guided by the legiti mate objective of food aid doing more good and less harm, often for a variety of reasons they are not conducive to a coherent framework and may compromise the effectiveness of this assistance. Among them, the FAC is much broader than the CSSD and the WTO, both as regards its food security objective and the specific provisions contained therein. Recognizing the importance of the FAC and expediting its negotiation to better meet its objectives has been the focus of attention by the internationa l community for some time and recent intensified 6 efforts by the Food Aid Committee aim at launching formal negotiations. This would also respond to recent policy initiatives and strategies of donors whereby humanitarian food assistance is increasingly seen as an integral part of efforts to address the structural causes of chronic food insecurity. The FAC is no longer seen as simply having an ‘instrument focus’ (i.e. food aid) but also a ‘problem focus’ (i.e. food security), becoming a part of the broader processes of needs assessment and the related longer-term developmental responses. This paper aims at making a contribution in the process of renegotiating the FAC, in particular as regards the recognition of the importance of agricultural inputs for the recovery and rehabilitation of the agriculture sector.
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