Approaches of

Resilience Building

Elora Ferdous

Regional Change Lear- Resilience Building

Presented at the Christian Aid – Regional Consultation on Resilience – South Asia

06-08 Feb 2013, Kathmandu, Nepal

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What’s different about resilience?

Is it just good development, or rebranding

existing work?

What does a ‘resilience programme’ look like?

For Oxfam, resilience is the desired outcome,

rather than a particular type of programme.

The key is to start by considering the risks

that a community faces, and work to reduce

them.

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What is Resilience?

Oxfam defines resilience as the ability of women, men

and children to realize their rights and improve their

wellbeing despite shocks, stresses and uncertainty. Thus

resilience:

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Resilience ..

Addresses shocks (e.g.

disasters, conflict, food

price volatility) and stresses

(climate change,

ecosystem decline,

insecurity), and uncertainty

Is not just about coping which is

often about selling assets, nor is it about ‘bouncing

back’.

. People must be able to ‘jump

beyond’ and to feel confident in their

capacity to provide support for their

families regardless of shocks and

stresses

Is ultimately about people,

Is not just about early warning systems, and

drought resistant seeds),

- resilience requires changes to the structural

causes of vulnerability and

thus involves challenging the

status quo.

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Resilience building is a process

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Key to Resilience building:

Analyzing Risks?

Risks can be political, economic or environmental and include:

• Conflict, insecurity, violence and tensions;

• Volatility in food and commodity markets;

• Natural disasters;

• Climate Change;

• Crime, corruption;

• Overuse of resources, ecosystem decline and degradation.

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Risk Analysis at the Core of Programming

Risk analysis needs to:

• be substantially based on community viewpoints and put

community voices at the centre

• reflect power dynamics, vulnerability assessments, inequality,

gender and the most vulnerable groups

• look at current and future risk and recognise multiple hazards,

long term stresses and uncertainty

• updated, to reflect increased understanding of complexities

and changing contexts as the programme evolves.

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BUILDING RESILIENCE WITH EQUALITY

• Resilience must lead to with the most vulnerable, as they

have the hardest time in recovering from shocks and often are

excluded from accessing the means that can protect them

from destitution.

•

• Secondly, it will require the meeting of basic rights.

Everyone has an equal right to life, liberty and security as well

as a standard of living adequate for health and well-being,

including food, clothing, housing and medical care and

necessary social services, and the right to security in the

event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, or

old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond

control

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• Thirdly, it requires challenging power imbalances which

keep people poor, marginalised and therefore vulnerable.

More powerful groups are able to capture more government

services, control markets and exercise privileged influence

over the structure of society

• Fourthly, it will entail leveraging resources to fund this.

Greater resources need to be directed towards areas where

there is a greater need for them

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Social protection as a pre-requisite

for resilience..

• Social protection programmes are particularly important for

building resilience – they are pro-poor and pro-growth

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Empowerment and building effective

institutions

• Access to resources and rights is governed by institutions.

Institutions reflect power structures within society and are not

always the most democratic, nor always provide rights and

resources according to need.

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ENSURING ASSETS AND ACCESS TO

RESOURCES FOR THE MOST VULNERABLE

• Access to land is particularly important for both the rural and

urban poor because it can provide a means of production,

shelter, dignity, and a means for accumulation.

• Natural resources are a key to resilience building for poor

people. Rural livelihoods and well-being are directly reliant on

the diversity and health of ecosystems and the services they

provide (e.g. fuel, food, etc.), and also most vulnerable to

changes in those services

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Some of the barriers of Resilience

building: • Development and humanitarian work is entirely separate.

They work in Silos creating confusion between ways of

working

• Aid funding streams – not fit for resilience work

• Resilience-building requires long-term (in the range six to ten

years) flexible funding, often capable of addressing immediate

and longer-term needs simultaneously

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Risk as Humanitarian issue..?

• The central problem for risk is that it has been seen, as a

humanitarian issue, and not been brought into the

development discourse.

• In order to strengthen the essential political dimension, risk

and resilience need to be integrated into development policy

and practice at all levels.

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Where we start the Resilience building..

Disaster

48 hr assessment/

(Resilience building

starts here)

EFSL ends ..Resilience

building stars with

development planning

Long term Development programme

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Tools we would be using for Resilience

Building

• PCVA

• EMMA

• HEA

• GEM

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Who we should work with?

Within Oxfam

• EFSL

• Economic Justice

• DRR

• Long term Development planning

Who are major resource providers On Climate change analysis

• IFPRI

• IRRI

• CIAT

IFPRI: Pakistan Nepal

IRRI: Bangladesh

CIAT: South East Asia

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Measuring Resilience

• Still developing....

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Risk management is key

• National governments, donors, humanitarian and

development organisations and civil society must put risk

faced by the most vulnerable at the heart of all long-term

planning and humanitarian and development work

• All development and humanitarian actors – donors,

governments, international organisations and NGOs – should

only fund and implement work which seeks to reduce risk, and

provide greater support and resources to build peoples’

capacity to adapt.

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New ways of working

• Resilience is not what we do but how we do our work

• humanitarian and development actors need to develop joint

analyses and a single strategy.

• Donors and governments need to find new ways of providing

long term flexible funding.

• Governments need to work together to ensure that risk and

resilience are reflected in the post-2015 Millennium

Development Goals.

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Thank You