Renewed support needed for agricultural support in the Sahel 

By Jose Luis Fernandez,

Coordinator, FAO’s Regional Resilience, Emergency and Rehabilitation Office for West Africa/Sahel (REOWA)

On 3 February 2014, humanitarian partners launched the 2014-2016 Strategic Response Plan for the Sahel in FAO premises in Rome. The launch of the Plan was the culmination of a regional process in which hundreds of partners delivering humanitarian aid in the Sahel countries have come together to assess needs and formulate concerted plans and a unified funding request to UN Member States and donor organizations.

 

For 2014, the Plan includes response strategies to cover the most humanitarian needs of millions of people still affected by food insecurity and malnutrition in the region, including agricultural response. On 2 May 2014, only 13 percent of the required funds for the agricultural component of this appeal were received.

What are the immediate consequences of this lack of funds?

The lacks of adequate funding for emergency agricultural and livelihood support in the Sahel is preventing vulnerable communities who rely on small-scale agriculture to produce their own food. Millions of men and women farmers have to face the next main agricultural campaign (May-October 2014) with depleted or low stocks of food crop seeds, and will therefore cultivate reduced areas of land, or will not even be able to plant at all. Herds are extremely weakened by the lack of adequate food due to deficits in previous months fodder productions. As a consequence they are very vulnerable to diseases and to death.

 

Vulnerable families will rely entirely on markets in the coming months as the lean season, also known as the ‘hunger season’, has already begun. In absence of assistance, the most vulnerable households are forced to reduce quantity and quality of daily meals, reduce their investment in quality inputs, sell their productive assets and become indebted. These negative coping mechanisms threaten their ability to respond to shocks in the short, medium and long term. In particular vulnerable households will be confronted to possible droughts, floods or insecurity in the months to come with low level of adaptative capacities.

We can make a difference

In the past years, millions of vulnerable households have not benefited from adequate support. It is refraining communities from becoming resilient and protecting their livelihoods. Without a renewed commitment of donors and partners to support food production and protect livelihoods, a further deterioration of food security and nutrition can be expected throughout 2014, requiring long-lasting and costly food assistance. In the coming months, other opportunities shall be seized to support food production and protect livelihoods in the region with support to livestock, flood plain recession and off-season agriculture.

 

The food security challenge in the Sahel shall not be forgotten. The remaining needs of the region are enormous and donors and partners still have the opportunity in the coming months to support households affected by food insecurity with support to livestock, flood plain recession and off-season agriculture. Increasing support to the agricultural sector could help vulnerable households break the cycle of poverty and hunger, instead of keeping them dependent on food assistance.

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Pauvreté et vulnérabilité au Sahel : cinq choses à savoir

 Par le Bureau pour la Coordination des Affaires Humanitaires

Le Sahel : c’est une région qui s’étend de l’extrémité occidental du continent Africain jusqu’aux berges de la mer Rouge, en longeant le flanc sud du Sahara et qui figure parmi les plus pauvres et vulnérables au monde.

 

En 2012 et 2013, face à la sécheresse et les conflits qui ravagent la région, la communauté internationale s’est mobilisé afin de venir en aide à des millions d’enfants, de femmes et d’hommes vulnérables, ce qui a permis d’éviter une catastrophe de grande envergure.

 

Mais les causes de cette vulnérabilité aigue restent entières. Nombre de communautés de la région, au Sénégal, en Gambie, Mauritanie, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Tchad et au nord du Nigéria et du Cameroun, font toujours face à une situation désespérante.

 

Aujourd’hui, l’Organisations des Nations Unies et les partenaires humanitaires se réunissent à Rome pour lancer une stratégie sur trois ans pour endiguer cette vulnérabilité. Voici cinq points clés pour comprendre la crise que traverse la Sahel et les efforts des organisations humanitaires et de développement pour aider la population à y faire face et à la surmonter.

 

1. Le nombre de personnes qui ne savent pas si elles auront de quoi se nourrir au prochain repas s’est multiplié par deux en un an. Au début de l’année 2013, environ onze millions de personnes se trouvaient en situation d’insécurité alimentaire. Aujourd’hui elles sont plus de 20 millions dont 2,5 millions qui ont besoin d’assistance humanitaire d’urgence pour survivre. Dans le sud-est du Niger par exemple, du fait de la sécheresse, des inondations et du conflit dans le Nigéria voisin, la population de la ville de Diffa ne peut produire suffisamment de nourriture pour subvenir à ses besoins. « Nous n’avons rien mangé depuis dix jours » se lamente Mohamed Dala. « Avant les inondations, je produisais 50 sacs de poivrons ainsi que du mais et du millet ».
2. La sécurité alimentaire et la nutrition sont au cœur de la crise mais d’autres facteurs y contribuent. Cette année, près de cinq millions d’enfants sont en passe de souffrir de malnutrition modérée ou sévère. Dans tout le Sahel, plus 1,2 million de personnes ont fui la violence et l’insécurité, la plupart s’étant réfugié dans des pays alentours et mettent ainsi une pression additionnelle sur les ressources déjà limitées de ces pays. Ces populations sont très vulnérables aux maladies et épidémies. Du fait du manque criant d’infrastructures médicales beaucoup meurent de maladies bénignes.
3. Il faut une nouvelle approche pour rompre ce cycle de la faim et de la vulnérabilité. La crise du Sahel est sévère mais elle n’est pas nouvelle. On ne peut plus répondre au cycle récurrent de crises par un cycle continu d’assistance humanitaire. Robert Piper, le Coordonnateur Humanitaire de l’ONU pour le Sahel s’exprimait en ces termes dès le mois de Septembre dernier : « Nous ne pouvons continuer comme cela, c’est intenable. A moins de changer notre approche, nous allons devoir venir en aide à un très grand nombre de personnes chaque année. » Cette année, l’ONU et les organismes d’aide s’engagent dans une stratégie sur trois ans pour répondre à ces défis de façon plus systématique. Les agences, expertes dans des domaines différents de l’assistance humanitaire tels que la nutrition, la santé ou l’eau et l’assainissement, ont conjointement développé des stratégies communes et complémentaires visant à répondre à la crise de façon globale.
4. Les agences humanitaires travaillent avec les gouvernements ainsi que les acteurs du développement. L’étendue des besoins est telle qu’aucun organisme ne peut y faire face seul. Lors de l’Assemblée générale de l’ONU en Septembre dernier, la communauté internationale a adopté une stratégie intégrée pour le Sahel. Celle-ci met en exergue le fait que les besoins humanitaires ne peuvent être adressés indépendamment de considérations sécuritaires et des efforts en matière de développement. Les personnes déplacées par le conflit au nord Mali ont besoin de la paix et la stabilité avant même de recevoir une assistance pour relancer leurs productions agricoles ou reconstruire leurs cliniques. Les gouvernements et les agences du développement ont pour responsabilité de s’attaquer aux causes structurelles de la pauvreté et de l’inégalité qui rendent les populations aussi vulnérables aux chocs externes tels que les catastrophes naturelles et les conflits.
5. Les agences humanitaires se disent convaincues de pouvoir faire la différence. Elles ont besoin pour cela des fonds nécessaires. Cette année, les besoins financiers des quelques 117 organisations qui apportent une assistance humanitaire à des millions de personnes dans neuf pays du Sahel s’élèvent à plus de deux milliards de dollars américains.

Comment seront utilisés ces fonds? Un million de dollars permettrait aux agences de mettre en place une infrastructure de base en eau et assainissement, essentielle à la survie de 40 000 personnes au Tchad. Avec 12,5 millions, la communauté humanitaire au Burkina Faso pourrait apporter une assistance nutritionnelle et médicale à 115 000 enfants souffrant de malnutrition sévère. Pour un peu moins de dix millions, ce sont pas moins de 500 000 enfants qui pourraient retourner à l’école et recevoir une éducation de qualité au nord Mali.

 

Resilience wasn’t built in a day

By Anouk Delafortrie, Regional Information Officer for West Africa, ECHO

Upon interviewing Lenli Traoré, a small farmer in Tapoa, the easternmost province of Burkina Faso, about how his family will be coping after the failed harvest he pulls a faded photo from his breast pocket. “Paguidamba”, he explains, “was one year old when she died. She was ill and became malnourished. We waited too long to seek medical help.” The loss of his daughter five years ago has left Lenli mourning, prompting him to share the fading depiction of the girl with a big belly so as to keep her memory alive. Touched by his gesture, I come to appreciate the true value of him cherishing his lastborn Dieudonné which he tenderly holds while his wife Kanlafé prepares the family meal.

 

At only 7 months Dieudonné has already been seriously ill twice during the rainy season, first measles, then malaria. And luckily, this time, his mother had been included as a beneficiary of Action Against Hunger’s cash transfer programme in the region. Although initially meant as a form of food assistance, Kanlafé spent almost her entire last instalment on medical bills for Dieudonné. But the family is happy to have had the possibility to seek care immediately. Most of the 75€ that Kanlafé received in 5 instalments during the ‘lean season’, the hardest months of the year when food and water become scarce, were used to buy food and condiments as well as soap for their family of nine.

 

There is no silver bullet to solving the erosion of coping mechanisms which a decade of food crises, shifting climate patterns and increasing food prices have brought upon many families of the Sahel like the Traoré’s. The European Commission’s humanitarian aid department ECHO has been supporting various resilience-building pilot programmes, ranging from seasonal cash transfers for poor households to subsidised health care for the most vulnerable, which could make a real difference if combined and scaled up at the national level.

 

 

 

“Humanitarian aid has its limits,” says ECHO’s head of office in Burkina Faso Eric Pitois. “Our goal is to save lives, and undertake some preventative action. But we have to go further now and encourage donors and governments to commit to long-term policies that will lift these people out of extreme poverty.”

 

Resilience wasn’t built in a dayLooking at all that is being achieved in regions where pilot programmes are running, their immense potential becomes apparent. In 5 of the 63 Burkinabe sanitary districts, ECHO funds programmes to ensure free health care for children under five, pregnant and breastfeeding mothers. The results are spectacular in that the average number of visits to health centres by mothers and children has multiplied many times over. This, in turn, is a blessing when striving to prevent children from becoming severely malnourished and dying from lack of care.

 

“Every year at the time of harvest, when parents are busy in the fields, the number of severely malnourished children admitted with medical complications increases,” says Action Against Hunger’s Dr. Issa Sawadogo who provides technical support for the treatment of severe acute malnutrition in Tapoa’s provincial hospital. “Children suffer the most when families don’t manage to be food self-sufficient. Malnutrition really needs to be considered as a public health priority and the solutions should not only come from NGOs.”

 

Brought together under an initiative to build resilience in the Sahel and West Africa – AGIR or the Global Alliance for Resilience Initiative – Dr. Issa’s point of view is gaining ground. The realization that increased agricultural production alone will not suffice to feed an exponentially growing population is sinking in. Infrastructure works and optimizing agricultural outputs can be extremely useful, but if there is one thing that humanitarians in this region are demonstrating, it is that investing in policies which shield the most vulnerable families, who are likely to benefit little from these works and agriculture schemes, from ‘falling in deeper’ is needed at the same time.

 

“Now is indeed the time to take action,” agrees Burkina Faso’s minister of agriculture Mahama Zoungrana. “Resilience should not be a single-sector effort, because it is a multi-disciplinary issue. We need to build on the best practices we’ve seen throughout the years and pull them together in AGIR so as to build long-term programmes that will allow our people to live in dignity.”

 

When asked about this year’s harvest, Lenli replied that the stock of cereals will only cover the family’s needs for 6 months. Alone in his field, shedding blood, sweat and tears to keep his family alive, one realizes it is not by lack of determination nor hard work that fathers like him come to lose their children, but by lack of a safety net.

 

AGIR aims to achieve zero hunger in West Africa by 2032. Rome wasn’t built in a day – and neither will resilience -, but building it on the right foundations can prevent the edifice from collapsing.

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Fighting Drought, Building Resilience in the Sahel one Community at a Time

By World Bank

The Senegal River courses through Guinea, Mali, Mauritania and Senegal, making its way to the Atlantic Ocean after traversing some of the driest, drought-prone parts of western Africa.

As with any shared water resource, the Senegal River is a major economic, social and cultural lifeline for over 35 million people, 12 million of whom live in its river basin which has a surface area of 300,000 square kilometers.

The US$228.5 million Senegal River Basin Multipurpose Water Resources Development project approved today by the World Bank Group’s Board of Directors marks a new push to alleviate water scarcity and improve farming prospects for millions of people in the four riparian countries. The project is the second phase of a multi-sector, multi-country 10-year program working to bring more food, energy, irrigation and to meet other development targets.

 

 

Boost for Farming

Take rice, a major staple food and preferred cereal of choice across much of western Africa.  Along the banks of the Senegal River and deeper into the delta, cultivating rice is a major occupation and principal source of food and income security for farming communities whose fortunes largely depend on the availability of water for irrigation.

Currently, irrigated farming is limited. Less than half of the Senegal River basin’s irrigation potential, estimated at 375,000 hectares, is developed. Of the 130,000 to 140,000 hectares that are developed, only 90,000 hectares are really usable. The new project will bring irrigation to 13,000 hectares, enhance regional integration and promote multi-purpose water resources development to increase incomes and improve community livelihoods.

Thilene village, in northern Senegal, is an archetypal example of how transformative impact can be achieved by providing farmers with irrigation. There, a new irrigation system fed by the Senegal River is boosting rice production enabling farmers to achieve record rice harvests three times a year.

“In the past we used to have great difficulties accessing water,” said Mamba Diop, an enthusiastic rice farmer. “Today everybody has water, and everybody can farm all year long.  This has increased our revenues; rural-urban migration has stopped because all the young people are interested in agriculture.  We were even able to electrify our village and send our kids to school.” Diop also serves as President of the Thilene Farmers Union.

A similar story is playing out in neighboring Mali, where the Senegal River is formed through the merging of Bakoye and Bafing rivers.  Here, communities have practiced subsistence agriculture, and lack of irrigation has meant that prosperity had remained elusive until a new irrigation system was installed.

“Our main activity is farming, that’s our only source of income,” said Sambali Sissoko, a farmer in Bafoulabé village.  “We are organized in cooperatives and each one of us has a piece of land where we grow cabbage, onions, eggplant, lettuce and maize. We are now able to water our land, and we will have a good harvest and more revenues.”

Protecting Human Health

Water-related diseases associated with large water infrastructure projects are prevalent in the Senegal River basin, a necessary tradeoff of continuing efforts to meet burgeoning food and energy needs for a growing population that is projected to double every 25 years.

For example, malaria affects over 14% of kids under age five and 9% among pregnant women, the most vulnerable groups. Among the riparian countries, Guinea tops the list with the highest prevalence rate of over 54%, while Mauritania has the lowest prevalence rate of 1.2%.  Mali and Senegal have each reported prevalence rates of 3.1% and 2.1% respectively.

Thanks to proper management of water bodies and distribution of mosquito nets, more and more communities living in the Senegal River basin are close to seeing malaria banished from their lives. The project has already distributed 3.1 million long-lasting insecticide treated bed nets. As a result, the use of nets has increased from 27.6% to 46% overall.

The example from Richard Toll, a town lying on the south bank of the river in northern Senegal, is illuminating.  Commenting about how the battle against malaria is being waged successfully, Dr. Alassane Tall, a physician at the local health center noted that thanks to large-scale distribution of mosquito nets, it is very rare to enter a home in Richard Toll and not find a mosquito net.  “Today, we have almost no occurrences of malaria here,” he asserted.

In an interview, Sall Dieynaba Sy, a mother of two young children attested to the success of the mosquito net distribution strategy, adding “Every day, every night, all year long, my children and I sleep under a mosquito net.”

Fish for Food

After agriculture, fishing is the next most important economic activity in the Senegal River basin. Unsustainable fishing practices and changing hydrology are negatively impacting livelihoods in many communities.

To support development of inland fisheries and aquaculture in selected areas of the river basin, the project is providing funding for strengthening fisheries-related institutions, development of sustainable fisheries’ management programs, support for enhancing the value of fish catches through better storage infrastructure, and finance of aquaculture development programs.

“Fishing is our main activity, that is how we are able to provide for our families,” said Serigne Ba, who has been practicing the craft for three decades and is President of the fishery association in village Thiago, Senegal. “With the new fishing boats and nets, we are able to go further in the river, catch more fish, and conserve the fish for a longer time because we now have refrigerated containers. This allows us to sell fish locally and to markets far away such as Richard Toll.”

Coordination and Cooperation Vital for Transformative Impact

The Organization for the Development of the Senegal River Basin (known by its French acronym, OMVS) was established in 1972 to promote coordinated water and energy development. Jointly governed by Guinea, Mali, Mauritania and Senegal, the OMVS is spearheading coordinated river basin planning and investment so that the risks of large-scale water investment are mitigated and the benefits are shared among the riparian states.

Speaking to the importance of a multi-pronged approach to sustainable development of the Senegal River basin, Kabiné Komara, High Commissioner of the OMVS said: “Over 12 million people living along the river used to be the poorest in the area. This project has improved health conditions and contributed to improved livelihoods. Through improved management of fisheries, food security has improved and revenues have greatly increased. In supporting agriculture, we didn’t just establish irrigated fields, but also provided farmers with guidance and training along with small loans that allowed for the improvement of agricultural techniques and sharing of knowledge sharing.”

As the four countries of the Senegal River basin work to improve the well-being of their people, it is clear that active coordination and close cooperation is delivering results.

“The second phase of the Senegal River Basin Multipurpose Water Resources Development project is helping communities to secure economic growth, improve well-being and cope and adapt to climate change,” said Shelley Mcmillan, Senior Water Resources Specialist and project leader. “This model of collaboration holds significant promise in other parts of Sub-Saharan Africa.”

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Change Through Cowpeas: In Mali, WFP Empowers Women Farmers

 

By World Food Program (WFP)

As the world’s largest humanitarian agency, the World Food Programme (WFP) uses its procurement needs to boost agriculture indeveloping nations through its Purchase for Progress (P4P) programmes. In the village of Logo in Mali, WFP and its partners have helped women farmers improve yields in the fields, while also enriching their children’s diets.

 

LOGO – On a sandy plain below Mali’s majestic Bandiagara cliffs, Awa Tessougué describes how she and a group of women farmers reshaped agriculture in their village, putting money in their pockets and improving their children’s nutrition in the process.

 

“In the beginning, my husband was sceptical about the project. Now, not only has he given me a larger plot of land so that I can grow more niebe (cowpea), but he also allows me to sell the family’s millet surplus to WFP,” she said.

 

Traditionally women in this region were denied access to land unless their husbands, who tended to cultivate millet for use in the home, consented. Some women were given tiny plots of land to grow crops for sale to cover some household expenses.

 

Awa Tessougué was among a small group of women whose husbands or male relatives gave them small parcels of land on which they grew niebe, a type of cowpea that is rich in protein, for sale in local markets.

 

WFP, through its P4P initiative, recognised the challenges facing these women as they attempted to move from subsistence farming to larger scale production of crops for sale, and started to work with them in 2009.

 

Acting with partners, including Catholic Relief Services and the Government of Mali’s local agricultural division, WFP taught the women how to increase production and also provided more resilient and high-yielding niebe seeds.

 

Thanks to these efforts, the women of Logo steadily increased their sales of surplus niebe, from one metric ton in 2011 (valued at approximately US$700) to 14 metric tons (with an approximate value of US$13,500) in 2013.

 

“Holistic” benefits

 

Yapè Tessougué, president of the Logo women farmers’ organization, says the village chief, who once fiercely opposed the project,is now very supportive.

 

“He has given 200 hectares of farming land to our organisation for niebe and millet production. He also offered a portion a land on which WFP built a warehouse to store our stocks,” she said. Awa Tessougué says that she can now pay her four children’s school fees, and is not dependent on her husband for all her needs.

 

“I even give my children a small amount of money to buy snacks during their break (at school) and I’ve noticed that they are now more motivated to go to school,” she said. WFP and its partners have also educated the women of Logo on the benefits of consuming the nutrient- and protein-rich niebe, which in the past was almost exclusively grown for sale.

 

Today, more and more women are using niebe in their own homes, and they say this has helped reduce child malnutrition rates in the village. “My children are less often ill and look healthier since they started eating more niebe,” said Binta Dramé, another farmer and mother-of-six. “The P4P project in Mali is very holistic as it brings together key aspects of development, such as nutrition, capacity building and gender empowerment,” said Ken Davies, the Global P4P Coordinator after he visited Logo in late September.

 

“While WFP is currently mainstreaming the best aspects of P4P into its overall Country Programme in Mali, I am glad to see the strong engagement from the Government at all levels”.

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Sound water management key to building resilience in Africa’s Sahel

Agricultural potential waiting to be unlocked – greater attention and investment needed

Sound water management holds the key to building resilience in Africa's Sahel and can free rural communities from the vicious cycle of weather-related food security crises that have plagued the region over recent years, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said today at a high level meeting on resilience in the Sahel, focusing on irrigation and water management, with participants from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal.

 

With both drought and flooding posing recurring challenges to the livelihoods of farmers and pastoralists, "water is often a problem in the Sahel, whether too much or too little. And the poorest and most vulnerable are the most affected," he noted.

 

A demanding region, with potential

 

Owing to its often harsh agro-climatic and environmental conditions, the Sahel is one of the most vulnerable regions of the world.

 

Still, agriculture is the most important economic activity in the Sahel.  Local economies and livelihoods in the Sahelian countries depend heavily on soil, water and vegetation, but the state of these resources has been steadily deteriorating as a result of expanding human settlement, erosion and demand for food, fodder, fuelwood and water. 

 

Yet agriculture in the region - put on a path to resilience - holds great potential, Graziano da Silva argued.

 

While the Sahel is characterized by low and erratic annual precipitation, with irregular short rainy seasons, its renewable water resources put regional supplies above the standard water scarcity limit of 1,000 m3/yr per capita.  Indeed, with the notable exception of Burkina Faso, there is no aggregate physical water scarcity in the Sahel.

 

 "The region's agriculture potential, when properly mobilized, could easily go beyond local sales and serve regional and even international markets," said Graziano da Silva.

 

But to unlock this potential, more effective, sustainable and integrated management of water resources for agricultural productivity and rural development is necessary.

  

Getting there

 

The FAO chief urged governments, development partners, academia, civil society and private sector participants at the Dakar meeting to be creative and uncompromising in their search for solutions.

"We have the tools to transform the vulnerable communities of the Sahel into much stronger and more resilient communities, and we cannot wait anymore for the next drought or the next flood," he said.

 

Investments in small-scale water harvesting and water storage have a tremendous impact on rural families, he said.

 

Flexible irrigation systems giving farmers better control over water can significantly enhance their incomes.

 

At the same time, more investment in medium to large-scale irrigation systems through effective partnerships between public and private sectors is needed, according to Graziano da Silva.

 

The event in Dakar was second of two back-to-back high-level meetings on boosting rural resilience in the Sahel organized by the World Bank, the Comité permanent Inter-Etats de Lutte contre la Sécheresse dans le Sahel (CILSS) and the governments of Mauritania and Senegal, with the participation also of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) and the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS).

 

The first meeting, focused on the needs of Sahelian pastoral communities, took place in Nouakchott, Mauritania, on 29 October.

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Building communities in the Sahel that can weather shocks

 

By the Food and Agriculture Organization

The time has come to break the "vicious circle" of crises in Africa's Sahel by proactively building up the ability of pastoralist and rural communities to weather drought and other shocks, rather than merely helping them recover from disaster after the fact.

 

"We cannot prevent droughts or floods, but we can put in place measures that will help stop them from turning into famine," FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva today told participants at a high-level event here in the Mauritanian capital.

 

The Nouakchott event, focused on the needs of pastoral communities, is the first of two back-to-back high-level meetings on boosting rural resilience in the Sahel organized by the World Bank, the Comité permanent Inter-Etats de Lutte contre la Sécheresse dans le Sahel (CILSS) and the governments of Mauritania and Senegal. The second, looking at irrigation needs in the region, takes place in Dakar, Senegal on October 30 and 31st.

 

A way of life at risk

 

 

Poor weather and high food prices have in recent years sparked recurring food and nutrition crises in the Sahel, leaving many rural families in precarious circumstances and on a vulnerable footing.

 

Among those most affected are the region's estimated 16 million pastoralists — livestock-reliant people who regularly move their families and animals in search of water and pasture.

 

While pastoralism has long offered a way for these communities to cope with bad weather and a lack of productive land, their vulnerability to drought, flooding, and other disasters has been on the rise due to increasing competition for access to water and grazing lands.

 

 And the Sahel is, and will likely continue to be, one of the world regions most affected by climate change, meaning that drought and other weather extremes will increase the pressures being brought to bear on pastoralists.

 

"Resilience works"

 

Often, when a crisis hits, the animals upon which pastoral families depend for food and income — as well as capital reserves — die in large numbers or are sold off to meet immediate needs. Selling animals might give temporary relief, but it also means the loss of a household's only productive assets, leaving them even more vulnerable to future calamities.

 

"This is a vicious circle that we need to break," Graziano da Silva said during a keynote address at the start of the Nouakchott meeting. "The only way to end recurrent emergencies in the region is to change from a reactive to a proactive and integrated approach, focusing on resilient livelihoods," he added.

 

The evidence shows that resilience works and is proving effective at saving not only lives and livelihoods but also money, the UN food chief argued. For example, in 2003-2004, the cost of reacting to and suppressing a locust plague in the Sahel added up to $500 million.

 

Last year, a similar crisis was avoided via the timely investment of $8 million that prevent a new outbreak from occurring, Graziano da Silva pointed out. Similarly, studies show that supplementary feeding of livestock before crisis hits — thereby preventing animals from dying out during drought, disease outbreaks, or other shocks — is 16 times less expensive than buying new animals after mass-die offs.

 

"At FAO, we are convinced that resilience is key to food security and are raising its prominence in our work," Graziano da Silva said. Increasing the resilience of livelihoods to threats and crises is one of five new strategic objectives recently established by FAO to focus and guide its work.

 

Building on what works

 

Graziano da Silva highlighted a number of areas where more focused action can help improve the resilience of the Sahel's pastoralist communities, including:

 

• Using mobile technology to improve communities' access to weather forecasts and information on vegetation cover, so they can take their animals to where there is forage.
• Scaling up cash for work opportunities that improve rural infrastructure while offering social safety nets.
• Ensuring not only that early warning and response mechanisms are in place, but that they are triggering early reactions.
• Providing various forms of direct support to pastoralists, especially in the area of animal health.
• Supporting the diversification of livelihoods and accumulation of assets by pastoralists.

 

All such efforts will require a joint effort by local communities, governments and the development community, concluded Graziano da Silva.

 

"To build resilience, we cannot work alone. We need to work in partnership," he said.

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More Irrigation and Pastoralism Could Transform Africa's Sahel Region

By Makhtar Diop, Vice President for Africa at the World Bank

The Sahel region, a vast arid stretch of land linking six countries in West Africa -- Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal -- is home to some of the most productive pastoralist communities in the world.And yet, assailed by a host of climatic, political and development challenges, their pastoralist way of life is under threat.

 

Here, over centuries, some 16 million pastoralists have perfected the art of survival in the Sahel, raising sheep and livestock in some of the most harsh and unforgiving environments anywhere on the planet. Meat yields fromthe Sahel rival those from some of the best ranches in Australia and the United States. Currently, half of the meat and two-thirds of the milk produced and consumed in the countries of West Africa originates in the Sahel.

 

However pastoralism is facing multiple threats. These include rapid population growth, conflict, volatile food prices, animal diseases, and shrinking grazing areas and water resources. Combined, these factors are steadily jeopardizing the survival of the pastoralists of the Sahel.

 

Climate change is expected to hit Africa hardest. It is increasingly likely that scientific warnings that the world could warm by 2°C in the next 20 or 30 years will come true. In such a case, pastoralism will be imperiled. The effects on the African continent will be dramatically more devastating under a warming scenario of 4°C.

 

Desert and aridity define the Sahel, yet its vast water resources are untapped. In a region where farming is the predominant economic activity, sadly, only 20 percent of the Sahel's irrigation potential has been developed. Worse still, one quarter of the area equipped with irrigation liesin a state of disrepair.

 

Pastoralism matters for Africa's future particularly in the Sahel. So does irrigation. Both affect farming, the dominant industry in the region,which accounts for one-third and more of all economic output in the Sahel. This in turn empowers the women of the Sahel, as women account for the majority of Africa's farmers.

 

Supporting pastoralism with more climate smart-policies; reducing vulnerability to drought, flooding and other disasters; and raising more healthy livestock through timely vaccines, are all necessary to help communities adapt to the ecological harshness of the Sahel.

 

Bringing more water to parched lands in the Sahel will not only improve food production but place more food on family dinner tables, allow farmers to move from subsistence farming into growing and selling greater quantities of food crops for higher earnings in local and regional markets. Climate-smart agriculture can increase yields, put more money in farmers' pockets and help protect biodiversity, improve soil fertility, and conserve the environment.

 

At a time when the global economy is slowly recovering, we want to prime the engines of growth that really matter.

 

The World Bank is hosting two major summits in Mauritania and Senegal focused on threats and opportunities for pastoralism and irrigation to thrive in Africa.

 

I am confident that in Nouakchott and Dakar, we will mobilize new coalitions of countries, development partners, business leaders, and the communities themselves for a new push to transform agriculture with more domestic, regional and international support for pastoralism and irrigation.

 

It can be done.

Resilience takes root in eastern Chad

By The United Nations Development Program - PNUD / Chad

Visiting Chad from 14 to 17 September, the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Helen Clark, traveled to the Sahel region of Dar Sila, located in the east of the country, to witness the implementation of a new program of resilience.

 

UNDP and its partners, civil society and the Chadian government are working together there to reduce the vulnerability of communities in all of its dimensions in the village of Goz Beida.

 

In Chad, our new program of resilience empowers local communities to provide health, education and rule of law services

 

 The area is extremely fragile due to its exposure to natural disasters, land degradation and loss of productivity, compounded by climate change and large flows of displaced populations that have added pressure to the local environment and its ability to provide services.

 

Taking advantage of a period of relative peace and stability in Dar Sila, the new approach aims to heal wounds by bringing people together into the same development programme.

 

"The dividend of greater stability has to come in the form of meeting the aspirations of the people for education for their children, proper health care and an opportunity to have a proper livelihood," said Helen Clark in an interview with Radio Sila, a local station that advocates daily for peace and harmony.

 

The program is directly helping to stabilize communities, but also working with local authorities to help people build a better future by generating new sources of revenue and getting access to basic services.

 

In its conflict prevention component, the programme has mobilized local radios, caravans of peace and religious and traditional authorities that have sensitized 65,000 people on issues relating to human rights, violence against women and community conflicts.

 

About 150 mediators, including many women, have helped solve 42 inter-community conflicts using traditional techniques, sometimes covering up to 70 miles on donkeys to promote dialogue and prevent violence in all the surrounding villages.

 

Mobile legal clinics have also helped to promote access to justice by teaching 130,000 people about principles relating to land tenure, marital and community law.

 

Thanks to this relative stability, the programme will encourage local communities to develop, and grow nutritious food, while allowing them to generate new sources of income from it.

 

The initiative will give them access to energy through the installation of generators that are able to complete the most difficult tasks, such as husking grain. One thousand women are being trained in marketing local products and have already contributed a total of US $8000 to run their associations.

In parallel, the program has developed solar panels that will light up homes at night.

 

"This program is wonderful for our women. We re-started our lives from scratch. We have gained a lot of confidence," said the head of the women's groups.

 

The programme also supports the resilience of local and national institutions, increasing their capacity to provide health, education and rule of law services and expand social protection and economic opportunities.

 

The municipality of Goz Beida itself now has 21 elected officials, including two women, and its budget increased tenfold in two years, from US $16,000 to $160,000.

 

For more visit www.undp.org

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Growing resilience through community gardens in Gambia

By Katie Robinson, Canadian Red Cross Society

For the first time in 15 years, communities in Gambia found themselves without food and income following poor rainfall during the 2011–2012 harvest season. Families were forced to sell their assets and livestock, or survive on charity and foraging.

 

The Gambia Red Cross Society – with assistance from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the Canadian government – aimed to provide immediate and long-term assistance to vulnerable communities in the North Bank Division and Lower River Region.

 

Using a two-pronged approach, the Red Cross provided emergency life-saving interventions whilst also focusing on longer-term community resilience. Distributions of food, quality rice seeds and fertilizer addressed the immediate needs, whilst the longer-term resilience activities concentrated on women-run vegetable gardens. The Red Cross provided these gardens with infrastructure support, training, drought-resilient seeds, proper fencing and new concrete-lined hand-driven wells.

 

“Before the Red Cross came to support us, we were struggling to feed our families,” says Funneh Touray, who works in the Sukuta Women’s Community Garden in the Lower River Region. “Thanks to their support we are now able to grow our own food, and are no longer facing hardship.”

 

The community gardens are not only thriving, they are generating an income as crops and products like jams and juices are sold to nearby communities. This has allowed parents to send their children to school and pay for health care.

 

Touray is very proud of her community and is looking forward to expanding their garden. They currently have two hectares of fencing around the garden, but only half is currently being used. She is looking forward to the day when more seeds will be planted and there will be more crops to look after.

 

“I have seen a change in my community and I am very happy,” says Touray. “Many organizations have entered my village, but we have never received assistance like we did from the Red Cross. What the Red Cross has done, nobody will forget. We will maintain this garden and continue to work hard to make everyone who supported us proud.”

 

For more go to www.ifrc.org

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Mieux produire pour mieux vivre

Par World Vision Mali

A Barakolombougou, un village situé à une centaine de kilomètres de Bamako, les communautés espèrent récolter en abondance cette année. Leur espoir n’est pas seulement fondé sur la quantité de pluie, mais elles comptent sur la fiabilité des terres qu’elles ont apprêtées suivant des techniques de régénération naturelle assistée et de préservation de sols récemment acquises grâce à l’appui de World Vision.

« Avec une bonne pluviométrie, nous sommes certains de récolter abondamment cette année, et peut être même plus que nous n’aurions besoin pour notre nourriture », dit Fragnan Coulibaly, un sexagénaire et président du comité villageois pour la pratique de la régénération naturelle assistée, le FMNR (Farmer managed natural regeneration).

Après quelques séances de formation, les communautés ont réalisé que les déficits agricoles de ces dernières années n’étaient pas seulement liés à l’insuffisance des pluies, mais aussi à la gestion qu’elles font de leurs terres.

C’est ainsi que pour contribuer dans la recherche d’une solution durable à l’insécurité alimentaire quasi récurrente qui maintient les communautés rurales dans une situation de vulnérabilité permanente, World Vision a choisi la résilience pour rendre les communautés autonomes et responsables de leur devenir.

Grâce à l’appui du Gouvernement du Royaume Uni, l’organisation a mis en place un projet de résilience pour promouvoir la gestion communautaire des ressources à travers la régénération naturelle assistée et la préservation des sols par des techniques de lutte contre l’érosion tels que le cordon pierreux ou la technique du Zai pour retenir l’eau et aussi l’élaboration du compost qui augmente naturellement et considérablement la production agricole.

Quant à Mahamane Sanogo, Coordinateur du projet et Ingénieur agro-forestier « les communautés ont accueilli ces techniques avec un vif intérêt, car juste après la démonstration plusieurs personnes ont déjà commencé à pratiquer les techniques apprises dans leurs champs, ce qui nous laisse croire que d’ici peu, les paysans eux-mêmes pourraient répliquer les connaissances acquises aux communautés avoisinantes. »

 

Pour plus d'informations visitez www.wvi.org

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Tackling hunger in the Sahel: the challenge of resilience

 

By Technical Cooperation and Development

Food crisis, drought, chronic hunger, rising food prices: the Sahel region continues yet again to suffer from recurrent food and nutrition crises. After 2005 and 2010, the populations of the Sahel region have had to face yet another crisis in 2012, following a disastrous agricultural season in 2011. The succession of droughts leads to inevitable negative consequences for the capacities of millions of people to meet their essential food needs in the Sahel region of West and Central Africa: drought leads to a reduction in agricultural production and rising food prices on consumption markets which affects the most vulnerable households that are highly impacted by the rise in commodity prices.

 

The food crisis of 2012 in the Sahel, in Niger, Chad, Sudan as well as Mali, Mauritania and Senegal, considerably deteriorated the food security situation of some 18 million people and led to a rise in mortality for undernourished children. At the height of the crisis in mid-2012, certain areas of Mauritania, North Mali and the Sahel region in Chad were faced with “extreme” food insecurity, the level before “famine”, while many other areas were considered to be in “critical” situations.

 

A major crisis has nevertheless been avoided thanks to humanitarian actors’ mobilisation through emergency interventions. However, despite a good rainy season and a relatively good agricultural and pastoral 2012/2013 season, the negative effects of the food crisis in the Sahel in 2012 are still being felt and lead to difficult access to food and necessary nutriments for the vulnerable populations, especially during the lean period, the time between the stock depletion and the following crop.

 

A chronic and structural food crisis

 

The Sahel is facing chronic food insecurity and high malnutrition levels, even during good agricultural seasons. In Chad, even though the production levels rose by 91% since the previous year, 2.1 million people are suffering from food insecurity, including 1.5 million in the Sahel region. In the most affected regions such as the Batha region, over 50% of the population cannot cover their daily basic food needs. In Mali, 2 million people are suffering from food insecurity and the maternal and child mortality rate is one of the highest in the world (13th country out of 136).

 

The series of crises is a first factor of chronic vulnerability for households in the Sahel region. The frequent food and nutritional crises do not allow vulnerable populations to have enough time to recover and thus contribute to a progressive erosion of their livelihoods. On top of these recurrent food crises, other external shocks also contribute to the reduction of the populations’ resistance capacities. The combination of climate, sanitation, social or economic factors such as the lack of basic infrastructure or services can explain the continued food insecurity that reigns in the Sahel region.

 

Political instability in the region (political crises, conflict, violence, population displacement, refugees, etc.) also contribute to render the security and humanitarian situation more complicated and to reduce the possibility to set up long-term solutions.

 

Douentza Mali (OCHA Mali)

 

 

These structural and cyclical factors led to the worsening of the general food and nutrition situation for the populations in the region in 2012, whose livelihoods are eroded, and who have to then turn to self-destructive survival methods such as debt, selling their productive assets such as livestock, reducing their daily food intake, consuming poorer seeds or foods, etc. These irreversible methods also impede on the populations’ capacity to recover and prepare for a future crisis.

 

Emergency responses help to tackle the effect of a cyclical crisis, and at best to avoid a major catastrophe by bringing short term responses (so-called quick impact projects) to the vital needs of the populations: food distributions or coupons, money transfers, protection of their productive assets, general cash distributions, food fairs, nutrition, as well as water, hygiene and sanitation interventions. However, it is neither sustainable nor desirable to bring an immediate response, with the risk of creating a dependency towards this type of aid.

 

Insufficient emergency responses: a mitigated assessment

 

Nowadays, the necessity to address the deep, structural causes of malnutrition and food insecurity in a multi-sector and sustainable framework, and not only in terms of emergency responses, lies in the ethos but also in real commitment. Structural development programmes have to be set up to enable the most vulnerable populations to resist to shocks and crises. Fostering resilience is also a way to facilitate long-term development.

 

Programmes that link humanitarian emergency relief and development have become scarce and difficult to implement, especially because of the restrictions imposed by certain donors with regards to the financing that limits the timeframe and ambition of the programmes, and thus the possibility of a sustainable response to a crisis.

 

Nevertheless, if situations such as the food crisis in the Sahel in 2012 allow decision-makers and donors to respond to such crises, they are also an opportunity to raise the awareness of these international actors to chronic food vulnerability situations. They also encourage using sustainable response mechanisms, by putting forward efficiency, relevance and the impact of the long-term development programmes to support populations in terms of productive capacities and resilience.

Addressing the causes of chronic vulnerability in order to reinforce resilience capacities

Responding to food and nutritional crises in a sustainable way underlines the need to tackle the structural causes of malnutrition and food insecurity in the area, as well as to assist populations in terms of their capacities to to deal with chronic stress (climate hazards, hunger gaps) and to shocks (food crises, armed conflicts, refugee influx), that are inevitable for some cases and are intrinsically linked to the recurrent drought in the region.

 

The objective is to foresee and prepare for these crises beforehand, to reduce their impact for the most vulnerable communities and to foster recovery after external shocks, by limiting the effects of food crises in the short and middle term in terms of health, income, means, development opportunities and household safety.

 

The response must be multi-sector and sustainable by focusing on a response to crumbling livelihoods, community development (rehabilitating infrastructure to relieve them from isolation, setting up and ensuring access to markets, creating groups of food farmers and providing storage buildings or managing natural resources, etc) and to foster infrastructure, and individual and collective capacities in terms of water, sanitation, health, education, etc. (strengthening the health system’s human and institutional capacities, improving access to water by building wells and increasing the network as well as building adapted infrastructure, etc).

 

This integrated approach includes improving food security (agriculture support, provision of seeds, tools and agricultural inputs, improving farming techniques, irrigation, diversification of livelihoods, livestock support and recapitalisation, distribution of fodder during the pastoral lean period, animal health, improved breeding techniques, etc..), supporting households’ economic recovery after a shock (for reconstruction / recapitalisation of livelihoods while avoiding the use of destructive survival strategies), the contribution to the fight against malnutrition (prevention, screening and management of acute malnutrition, sensitisation to good nutrition and hygiene practices and distribution of hygiene kits, support to health centres to improve the quality of the management of malnutrition and access to healthcare, etc..).

 

Resilience is the ability of people to emerge stronger from a crisis situation, or at least without being weakened by a crisis. Being resilient also means to be able to analyze one’s own vulnerability and adapt to a disturbed context (post-crisis). To do so, people must be familiar with the environment and the elements that could impact the future on a daily basis (by knowledge of past crises and recurrent crises). This requires the establishment of monitoring systems for disaster risk reduction and early warning systems to foresee crises that might occur with ad hoc mechanisms, but especially in the long term.

 

Financing to tackle resilience

 

The Sahel is now in a recovery phase whose outcome will determine the ability of people to cope with shocks created by a difficult environment and climate events that regularly hit the area. Allowing the implementation of programmes to promote resilience among the most vulnerable populations also requires an adaptation from the donors in the management of funds. This is an essential requirement to break the cycle of recurring food crises in the Sahel. We have to make this choice today to contain a predictable humanitarian disaster.

For more go to http://www.acted.org/
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UN Regional Coordinator Robert Piper on his most striking memory of visiting the Sahel

The UN Regional Coordinator for the Sahel, Robert Piper, shares the image that struck him the most during his recent trip to the Sahel region.

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The Dying Breeds

By Michael Boyce, Refugees International

Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso --  If you drive along the roads of northern Burkina Faso, as my colleagues and I have these past two weeks, you won’t always see the usual signs of human activity. While the population here is growing rapidly, the Sahel remains a sparsely populated region, and desiccated savannah dominates the landscape – stretching for miles into the distance.

 

But look a bit closer, and you will see that the Sahel is really one big, busy highway - traversed not by humans, but by their massive herds of livestock.

 

Cattle, sheep, and goats patrol this area year-round in search of grass, leaving in their wake close-shorn fields and huge volumes of manure. For untold generations, people here have consumed their milk and meat or sold it in nearby markets. Now however, as climate change has begun to hit the Sahel, herds are thinning out and their owners are suffering.

 

 

Mamadou, who lives in the town of Boulyiba, is one of many residents who lost livestock in the last two years. “Right now it’s so dry that we have a hard time feeding our animals,” he said, walking through a barren, brick-red field. “But if we sell an animal, that’s a year’s worth of work gone. So if you have a bad season and sell a number of animals, it’s almost impossible to recover.”

 

In centuries past, steady rains from May to September replenished the Sahelian grasslands, turning them from a dusty grey to a lush green. But in the last two decades, the rains have shifted. Now they come early or late, providing either too much water or too little. Good pasture is getting harder to find, and families have to sell their livestock to buy enough food in-between the harvests.

 

To most people in the West, saving for an emergency means funding a bank account or buying a savings bond. In the Sahel, however, people buy livestock to accumulate and store their wealth. So as people here lose their herds, they become poorer and less able to bounce back after a crisis.

 

A few hours north of Birguin, the 2,000 residents of Gourtoure are still reeling from an unprecedented flood in 2012 which washed away their entire village.  More than 3,000 goats and sheep were swept up in six-foot-high floodwaters, their carcasses left dangling from the trees. “Things are miserable here,” one of the village elders told us. “AGED [a local aid agency] gave us two animals after the floods, but they can’t give us what we lost.”

 

Residents of Gourtoure are still reeling from an unprecedented flood in 2012
Credit: Refugees International (Burkina Faso - 2013)

 

If global climate change continues as experts predict, then the Sahel will be badly affected. Weather events that are extreme today will become the norm. Drought will alternate with flood as rains grow more erratic, and rising temperatures will scorch land that was once productive. That will mean more hardships for the people of this region. And as the livestock on which they depend dwindle, they may have no choice but to leave the Sahel for good.

 

Michael Boyce is the Press & Information Officer for Refugees International, a non-profit organization that works to end displacement and stateless crises worldwide and accepts no government or UN funding.

 

For more visit http://www.refintl.org/

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Why NOW is the moment to give additional funds to the Sahel

Families in Africa's Sahel region are still trying to bounce back from the 2012 drought and food crisis. However the region remains in crisis, with with more than 11 million people in needing help and the humanitarian response severely underfunded.

Director General of the European Commission's Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department (ECHO), Claus Sørensen, and Humanitarian Coordinator for the Sahel, Robert Piper, explain why NOW is the moment to give additional humanitarian funds to the Sahel region.

 

 

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Sahel: Millions need long-term support

By the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)



The UN’s senior humanitarian representative in the Sahel region of West Africa has called on the international community to maintain its commitment to millions of people who face another year threatened by malnutrition, displacement, conflict and high food prices.



 

Speaking at a press briefing in Geneva, Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Sahel and Assistant Secretary-General Robert Piper said that the region remained in crisis, even though the response to last year’s food crisis was “fast and substantial”.

“A lot of things went right in 2012 despite the scale of the challenges,” he said. “The temptation going into 2013 was to breathe a sigh of relief and take the foot off the humanitarian accelerator.

 “(But) we can’t take a year off just yet. The Sahel is still in crisis as a region.”

Over 10 million need food

A range of factors have left an estimated 10.3 million people in need of food assistance across the region. Many communities are still reeling from last year’s food crisis, which came less than two years after the previous one. Cereal prices remain high, exacerbated by floods in northern Nigeria (an area that produces 50 per cent of the Sahel’s cereals) as well as insecurity in Nigeria and Mali.

This insecurity and flooding have meant that pastoralists in Chad and Niger are cut off from Nigerian livestock markets, making it difficult for them to sell their cattle at the prices they need to make a living. Finally, continued Piper, many people need assistance because of the very deep nature of their vulnerability.

“We need to recognize that one reasonable agricultural season will not reverse the levels of acute vulnerability in the region,” he said. “Vulnerable households affected by cycles of ever-frequent crises don’t need much of a push to go under the emergency line.”

Funding thwarts efforts to tackle root causes of vulnerability

For 2013, UN agencies and their humanitarian partners have appealed for US$1.7 billion to help them support communities in the nine countries that make up the Sahel. To date, $473 million – about 28 per cent of what is needed – has been received.

“2013 is not the year to reduce our commitments to the Sahel,” said Piper. He noted that the type of funding received was limiting the ability of agencies to respond effectively to the crisis.

Forty-three per cent of the funding that has been received has been directed towards short-term food aid. While this has ensured that 1.2 million people across the region received food assistance in the first two months of 2013, it also meant that aid agencies were constrained in their ability to address the root causes of vulnerability.

“The resources that are being received are slanted to particular sectors,” Piper said. “They do not allow us to tackle the root causes of vulnerability in the Sahel.”

For example, agricultural projects that are designed to help communities build resilience against disasters and break the cycle of aid dependence have received only five per cent of the financial support they need. Only 108,000 of the estimated 5.9 million farmers in need received seeds ahead of the May 2013 planting season, meaning that many millions may face a third year of crisis in 2014.

“Last year’s response to the food crisis was extraordinarily good,” said Piper. “(But) we need to learn from this success. Our record for 2013 looks less promising but it’s not too late.”

The need for greater investment in addressing the root causes of vulnerability will be a major focus of the Fourth Session of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction that is being held in Geneva this week. This event will see governments, the UN and the wider humanitarian and development communities continue to explore the global framework for reducing disaster risk. It comes on the heels of a new report from the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) that warned that direct losses from disasters have been underestimated by at least 50 per cent, and have cost the global economy in the range of $2.5 trillion since the start of this century alone.

 

 

The need for greater investment in addressing the root causes of vulnerability will be a major focus of the Fourth Session of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction that is being held in Geneva this week. This event will see governments, the UN and the wider humanitarian and development communities continue to explore the global framework for reducing disaster risk. It comes on the heels of a new report from the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) that warned that direct losses from disasters have been underestimated by at least 50 per cent, and have cost the global economy in the range of $2.5 trillion since the start of this century alone.

For more go to http://www.unocha.org/rowca/
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