Attachment J.2- USAIDResiliencePolicyGuidanceDocument.pdf

Cover photo credits: (clockwise from top) Morgana Wingard;

Paul Seward/Farm Input Promotions Africa–Kenya Maize Development Program;

Siaka Millogo.

Building Resilience to Recurrent Crisis

USAID POLICY AND PROGRAM GUIDANCE

Table of Contents

Letter from the Administrator 3

Executive Summary 5

Introduction 7

Framing Resilience 9

The Results We Seek 9

Conceptual Framework 10

Selecting Areas of Focus 13

Key Resilience Principles 16

Core Operational Principles 17

An Agenda for Operational Change 18

Joint Problem Analysis 19

Coordinated Strategic Planning 20

Mutually Informed Project Designs and Procurements 22

Robust Learning Agenda 23

Conclusion 24

Selected Resources 25

I am pleased to present USAID’s fi rst-ever policy and program guidance on building resilience to recurrent crisis. Drawn from decades of experience providing humanitarian relief and development assistance, this guidance aims to reduce chronic vulner-ability and promote more inclusive growth in areas of recurrent crisis. Ultimately, we seek to save and improve lives and decrease the need for repeated infusions of humanitarian assistance in these areas.

The importance and urgency of this work has been made clear over the past year. In 2011, the worst drought in 60 years plunged 13.3 million people into crisis in the Horn of Africa. Only a few months later, another crisis emerged in the Sahel, where millions of people have suffered from the devastating impacts of drought, confl ict, and other pressures. The widespread need seen in these two regions refl ects similar diffi culties facing communities across the globe; in far too many places, families often rely on humanitarian assistance, year after year, just to survive.

In response to these emergencies, the international community provides signifi cant levels of lifesaving relief, largely concentrated in just a few countries. Over the last decade, approximately US $90 billion was spent by international donors in just nine coun-tries, accounting for almost 50 percent of all humanitarian assistance during this period. During the same time, three-quarters of USAID humanitarian assistance was spent in just 10 countries. Global trend lines and projections show clear and continuing growth in humanitarian need in certain regions, and climate change threatens to exacerbate both the frequency and severity of extreme weather events and undercut important development gains.

We can do better. That’s why USAID is working with committed and accountable governments and international partners to build resilient societies even while saving lives in times of crisis. While we cannot stop shocks from happening, we must increase our focus on helping people and their societies withstand and recover from them. In the Horn of Africa, for example, we have set a goal to directly benefi t 10 million people and reduce the region’s emergency caseload by 1 million people within 5 years.

We expect to defi ne and realize similarly transformative impact in other areas where we apply this policy and program guidance.

To do so, we are committed to identifying how to measure a broader range of results, with stronger monitoring and evaluation mechanisms for resilience.

In order to reach these goals, we must strengthen the way we work as an agency. Too often, our humanitarian and development teams operate in separate geographic locations, on separate problems, with separate goals. To effectively build resilience we must unite our approaches. While this is not an easy commitment, it is an important one, and we have begun to make progress. Over the past year in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel, for example, we have created integrated agency units – called Joint Planning Cells – that are working to comprehensively address both humanitarian and development needs in close coordination with country governments and international partners. The effort of these teams demonstrates the powerful effect that we can have when we operate as a united Agency toward a singular goal. Leadership at all levels, in the fi eld and in Washington, is committed to facilitating and supporting the innovations necessary in our programming and operations to achieve our goals.

We undertake these efforts because we believe they will strengthen our ability to save and improve lives. No one should have to face the crippling circumstances we have seen in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel over the past year. Through building resilience, we can help prevent that desperation, save lives, and create the conditions where families and communities can prosper.

Dr. Rajiv J. Shah USAID Administrator

December 2012

Letter from the Administrator

While we cannot stop shocks from happening, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) can – and must – do more to help people withstand them. USAID has been in the vanguard of international momentum to support country and regional plans and build resilience to recurrent crisis. Through this policy and program guidance, we will leverage the broad range of our institutional capabilities to implement innovative programmatic approaches to promote resilience. Through these efforts, we will draw on our mandates to provide lifesaving hu-manitarian assistance and longer-term development assistance1 (including our Development Assistance, Global Health, and Economic Support Funds accounts).

KEY COMPONENTS OF RESILIENCE

While the concept of resilience has broad applicability to many of the environments in which our Agency works, this guidance is specifi cally focused on areas where chronic poverty inter-sects with shocks and stresses to produce recurrent crises and undermine development gains. In these places, we must increase adaptive capacity – the ability to respond quickly and effectively to new circumstances – and improve the ability to address and reduce risk.

We will emphasize approaches that empower women and more effectively reduce gaps between males and females.

Functioning institutions of good governance and democratic accountability are also essential; building resilient countries and systems requires effective and inclusive governments that hold themselves accountable for results. Working closely with other U.S. Government agencies, international donors, multilateral organizations, and other partners, we will elevate and support inclusive country-led plans that lead to sustainable reductions in vulnerability and promote inclusive growth.

AN AGENDA FOR OPERATIONAL CHANGE

Our success in achieving these goals requires that we establish resilience to recurrent crisis as a common objective across our development and humanitarian programs. While we will main-tain both the lifesaving speed of humanitarian assistance and the longer-term focus of development assistance, we will also identify opportunities to layer, integrate, and sequence these core capabilities to achieve results.

Executive Summary

What Is Resilience?

For USAID, resilience is the ability of people, households, communities, countries, and systems to mitigate, adapt to, and recover from shocks and stresses in a manner that reduces chronic vulnerability and facilitates inclusive growth.

1 For the purposes of this guidance, the term “development assistance” refers to funding in our Development Assistance, Global Health, and Economic Support Funds accounts.

THE RESULTS WE SEEK

Our efforts to build resilience will contribute to a sustainable reduction in vulnerability and more inclusive growth. In this pursuit and in the areas where we apply this policy and program guidance, we intend that our efforts will result in:

• increased adaptive capacity

• improved ability to address and reduce risk

• improved social and economic conditions of vulnerable populations

Over the long-term, we envision that these results will collectively contribute to reduced humanitarian need, and met-rics will be developed to capture these results.

Ultimately, we seek to save and improve lives. In the Horn of Africa, for example, we aim to benefi t directly 10 million people and reduce the region’s emergency caseload by 1 million people within 5 years. We are defi ning a comparable expectation for impact in the Sahel, based on local conditions, and will likewise develop metrics for impact in other focus countries and regions moving forward.

In particular, our:

HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE will seek more opportunities to reduce vulnerability and lay the foundation for longer-term development while continuing its primary focus on saving lives, and our

DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE will undertake longer-term programming in chronically vulnerable communities and be suffi ciently fl exible in higher-risk areas to build resilience and facilitate inclusive growth.

Under this guidance, USAID is institutionalizing change by en-suring that integrated teams of humanitarian relief and development experts work together to better understand each other’s strengths and constraints and undertake:

1. Joint Problem Analysis and Objective Setting so teams have a common understanding of the underlying causes of recurrent crisis.

2. Intensifi ed, Coordinated Strategic Planning around Resilience to ensure that we anticipate risks, vulnerabilities, and probable humanitarian need when deciding on development strategies.

3. Mutually Informed Project Designs and Procurements to enable the layering, integrating, and sequencing of humanitarian and development assistance.

4. Robust Learning so we can develop the appropriate indica-tors, make midcourse corrections, and share lessons learned across the Agency and with external partners.

These efforts will be supported by leadership action to address barriers to organizational change. At the heart of this docu-ment is our commitment to empower solution-holders close to the problem; leadership at every level will remain committed to addressing unnecessary roadblocks that stand in the way of meeting our objectives.

In September 2011, at the Nairobi Summit on the Horn of Africa Crisis, African leaders called for a new approach to ad-dressing recurrent crisis in the region. Based on the widespread recognition that current trends and past experience dictated a new approach, the Joint Declaration from this summit called on development partners to “walk” and ”work” with African leaders to support long-term programs and strategies to build resilience. They specifi cally called on the international communi-ty to support reform of the emergency humanitarian response and development assistance systems to enhance resilience and promote long-term solutions,2 recognizing the way they work together will have signifi cant impact on the results we are able to achieve.

This call emphasizes growing international recognition that, as a community and as individual donors, we must build upon previous efforts to strategically coordinate our humanitarian response and longer-term development assistance3 in a way that elevates country- and regional-led plans and catalyzes sustain-able, transformational change. Reducing chronic vulnerability and building resilience require interdependent and multisectoral approaches that combine strong technical solutions with new operational approaches. It also requires that we work in close coordination with a wide range of partners; the spotlight on international partnerships below describes the Global Alliance for Action for Drought Resilience and Growth in the Horn of Africa and the Global Alliance for Resilience in the Sahel (AGIR- Sahel), which play important coordination roles in these regions.

We will continue to deliver lifesaving humanitarian assistance where crises occur. But we will also focus on doing better. As a global community and as partners in the recovery of com-

Introduction

We must strategically coordinate humanitarian and development assistance in a way that catalyzes sustainable, transformational change.

Spotlight on International Partnerships:

The Global Alliance for Action for Drought Resilience and Growth

The Global Alliance committed development partners to better coordinate, harmonize, and align their programs and policies to enhance resilience against chronic drought and promote economic growth in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel.

Active Work Streams:

Support for the development of common country and regional programming frameworks, regional capacity building and monitoring and evaluation frameworks.

USAID’s Role:

Assist regional organizations and governments to reduce chronic vulnerability to drought emergencies and enhance resilience, espe-cially in dryland areas.

Important Dates April 2012 USAID, together with African and international development partners, co-hosted a Joint Intergovernmental Au-thority on Development (IGAD) Ministerial and High Level Development Partners Meeting on drought resilience in Nairobi that established a new Global Alliance for Action for Drought Resilience and Growth in the Horn of Africa. The Global Alliance is supporting the completion of technically rigorous Country Program Frameworks that will enable donors, including USAID, to closely align programs and funding with plans developed and owned by governments of drought-affected areas.

June 2012 USAID convened the fi rst meeting of the Global Alliance in Geneva.

July 2012 Global Alliance for Resilience in the Sahel, AGIR-Sahel, was established under the leadership of the European Union and will work closely with the Global Alliance for Action for Drought Resilience and Growth in the Horn of Africa. It proposes a roadmap for better coordination of humanitarian and development efforts in the Sahel region. USAID will be focusing on helping to build the resilience of households, communities, and systems in the most vulnerable agropastoral and marginal ecological zones.

2 East African Community, Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, and the Republic of South Sudan. “Ending Drought Emergencies: A Commitment to Sustainable Solutions” http://www.statehousekenya.go.ke/speeches/kibaki/sept2011/NBI_DECLARATION_2011090902.pdf

3 For the purposes of this guidance, the term “development assistance” refers to funding in our Development Assistance, Global Health, and Economic Support Funds accounts.

munities suffering from recurrent crisis, we cannot be satisfi ed by continual cycles of suffering from one humanitarian crisis to the next. While we cannot stop shocks from occurring, we can do much more to help people withstand and recover from them, creating a platform for their continued development. By layering, integrating, and sequencing humanitarian and devel-opment assistance, we can further the objectives of each to a greater extent than by programming in isolation. Through successfully capitalizing on their individual and shared purposes and strengths, we believe that, over the long term, our efforts can result in reduced humanitarian need where we apply this policy guidance.

This policy and program guidance provides an operational vi-sion for the Agency intended to increase our effectiveness. This guidance will help us draw important lessons from the Horn of

Africa and the Sahel, where heightened international attention and strong leadership have created opportunities to innovate and build resilience. Although the actions required to build resilience are likely to look different in different contexts that face unique shocks and stresses, our experience in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel will provide key insights as we expand our focus to other areas. Identifi cation of additional areas of focus4 will be guided by historic patterns of shocks, stresses, and humanitarian need, among other factors. We also intend to issue more detailed operational and program guidance and tools to inform the implementation of this policy. This guidance will inform our work with partners, including those within the U.S.

Government, who are indispensable to these efforts. The scope of the problem requires concerted and concentrated action by all stakeholders.

By layering, integrating, and sequencing humanitarian and development assistance, we can further the objectives of each to a greater extent than by programming in isolation.

4 Beyond the Horn of Africa and the Sahel, this guidance will also be applied to other areas of recurrent crisis based on analysis of a variety of factors (see “Selecting Areas of Focus”) and through conversation between USAID/Washington and our fi eld missions.

For the purposes of this policy guidance, USAID views resilience in the face of recurrent crisis as:

the ability of people, households, communities, coun-tries, and systems to mitigate, adapt to, and recover from shocks and stresses in a manner that reduces chronic vulnerability and facilitates inclusive growth.

Shocks and stresses take many forms. Dramatic events such as hurricanes, earthquakes, or tsunamis can have a devastating, immediate impact. Stresses can take less apparent but insidious forms and often have more gradual onsets than shocks, includ-ing events such as drought, global economic volatility, or natural resource depletion. In areas of chronic poverty, for example, a simple increase in food prices can trigger signifi cant underlying vulnerability and result in crisis. Confl ict can be both a shock as well as an underlying source of stress that can make communi-ties more vulnerable to other shocks when they hit.

The actual impact of any given shock or set of stressors at the community level is largely determined by the magnitude of the hazard itself, combined with the vulnerability to the shock and the capacity of those affected to withstand them. In the most cata-strophic case, a shock can completely overwhelm a community to the point of collapse. At a less extreme level, a society may eventu-ally recover, but diminished livelihoods and resources may leave affected populations worse off and more vulnerable than before.

USAID strives to build resilience so that, in the face of stress-es and shocks, the communities where we work are prepared and able to take anticipatory action to avoid major losses, and in the event that crisis results, they are able to respond effectively and build back better than before. This continued path of growth – even in the face of potential setbacks – is a critical component of our work.

Framing Resilience

THE RESULTS WE SEEK

Our approach to resilience requires that we identify ways to layer, integrate, and sequence our humanitarian relief and development assistance. We will specifi cally identify ways for our humanitarian assistance to seek more opportuni-ties to reduce vulnerability and lay the foundation for longer-term development while continuing its primary focus on saving lives and for our development assistance to undertake longer-time programming in chronically vulnerable com-munities and be suffi ciently fl exible in higher-risk areas as a means to build resilience and facilitate inclusive growth.

Our efforts to build resilience will contribute to a sustainable reduction in vulnerability and more inclusive growth. In this pursuit and in the areas where we apply this policy and program guidance, we intend that our efforts will result in:

• increased adaptive capacity,

• improved ability to address and reduce risk, and

• improved social and economic conditions of vulnerable populations.

Over the long-term, we envision that these results will collectively contribute to reduced humanitarian need, and met-rics will be developed to capture these results.

Ultimately, we seek to save and improve lives. In the Horn of Africa, for example, we aim to benefi t directly 10 million people and reduce the region’s emergency caseload by one million people within fi ve years. We are working to identify comparable expectation for impact in the Sahel, based on local conditions, and will likewise develop metrics for impact in other focus countries and regions moving forward.

Source: Neil Thomas/USAID

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

USAID’s conceptual framework for resilience distills the key components of our approach and is intended to provide a broad frame for country and regional teams to consider as they develop context-specifi c strategies. At its core is the idea that we are likely to fi nd recurrent crisis in places where chronic poverty and exposure to shocks and stresses intersect. We will focus our efforts to build resilience in these areas, where there is often low capacity to manage shocks.

To increase resilience, communities need both adaptive capacity and the ability to address and reduce risk. Adaptive capacity is the ability to quickly and effectively respond to new circumstances. This includes ensur-ing that social systems, inclusive governance structures, and economic opportunities are in place. While the components of adap-tive capacity are numerous and wide-ranging, USAID places a priority on the fi ve displayed in the conceptual framework. Equally important is an ability to analyze and reduce risk through pre-paredness, mitigation, prevention, and protection.

In areas where adaptive capacity and risk reduction strategies are weak, shocks and stresses often under-cut development gains, setting communities back on the path of inclusive growth.

Building Resilience in Burkina Faso: Safi eta’s Story

In February 2012, after a year of bad rains, a group of four women farmers in Burkina Faso were unable to harvest much of the maize they had planted during the rainy season. Between them, they had 31 children and no husbands. But thanks to a USAID- Catholic Relief Services program started 7 years ago to increase the resilience of villagers dependent upon rain-fed crops, they did have land plots they were able to fi ll with bright green onion sprouts. Key to their success was obtaining secure access to land, small-scale irrigation investments, and training on new crops.

While the program ended 2 years ago, these farmers, including a proud woman named Safi eta, are continuing to thrive on the proceeds of their dry season market gardens. “We chose onions,” she noted, “because if the water pump fails for a few days, they are strong enough to survive.”

“I am resilient now,” Safi eta said, laughing. “Just like the onions.”

Source: Siaka Millogo

The components of the conceptual framework are meant to guide our work rather than comprise a checklist. Every context will require a tailored approach, and USAID’s spe-cifi c contributions to building resilience will be adapted in a way that aligns and complements country and regional plans and works to strengthen the country enabling environment through support for appropriate policies and reforms. In addi-tion, our approach focuses on close coordination with other partners, including other U.S. Government agencies, interna-tional donors, nongovernmental organizations, civil society, and the private sector.

In developing a resilience strategy, multisectoral considerations must be taken into account. For example, a focus on drought-resistant agriculture and livestock could be supported by work to strengthen effective institutions to monitor and disseminate forecasts, provide extension services, and strengthen fi nancial services that promote savings and insurance. Attention should be paid to different groups within communities; for example, investing in youth, who play increasingly prominent and inter-generational roles as agents of recovery and change, should be seen as foundational to reducing risk. Many underlying fac-tors may also increase vulnerability and should be considered.

Population growth, for example, is increasing pressures in many places of recurrent crisis, signaling that efforts to meet the un-met need for family planning may be a necessary component of a larger strategy to build resilience. Helping vulnerable commu-nities predict, prepare for, withstand, and recover from shocks and crises through disaster risk reduction efforts and early warning systems, such USAID’s Famine Early Warning System (FEWSNET), will continue to be an important part of USAID’s approach.

We must also provide relief and promote development in ways that more effectively reduce gaps between males and females and involve and meet the different needs of men and women.5 Despite the fact that women often face a range of unique chal-lenges in areas of recurrent crisis – and often bear the heaviest burden of shocks and stresses – they also possess enormous individual and collective capacity to help themselves, their families, and their communities. A 2009 study examined the role of Sudanese women in improving household food security and suggested that rural women are more likely than men to ef-fectively use available local resources in diversifi cation strategies.

Furthermore, women with adequate access to food produc-tion sources (i.e., agricultural land, home gardens, and backyard

Drawing Lessons from Ongoing Resilience Activities:

Global Climate Change and Development

Climate change is a major stress that must be considered in designing strategies to build resilience. Taking steps to anticipate and incorporate plans for responding to potential climate change impacts into economic and political systems is referred to as “adaptation.” Climate adaptation requires that we utilize science, technol-ogy, innovation, and the best available information to understand and respond to unavoidable impacts. USAID’s Climate Change and Development Strategy’s second strategic objective is “Increasing resilience of people, places, and livelihoods” through investments in improved access to science and analysis for decision mak-ing, effective governance systems, and replicating and scaling up proven successes.

USAID is working to incorporate new norms from the start – from rising tem-peratures to more variable rainfall and greater incidence of drought to stronger storms.

USAID, as part of the President’s Global Climate Change Initiative, promotes the integration of climate change to support food security, health, governance, and disaster risk reduction (DRR), among other goals. For example, USAID is pilot-ing preventative, longer-term approaches to DRR than is typical in traditional

DRR, which works only in areas that are faced with specifi c hazards. Considering the current and future effects of climate change allows us not only to better predict, prepare for, and respond to shocks and stresses (e.g., hurricanes, fl ooding, and droughts) but also to improve planning for the long-term stresses of climate change. The Global Climate Change Initiative is a critical component of our overall resilience efforts; appropriately applying this guidance to climate change programs will strengthen our ability to achieve our objectives.

5 Consistent with USAID’s Policy on Gender Equality and Female Empowerment, we use data analyses that inform strategy and program design, and our programs address the different priorities, needs, and vulnerabilities of women and men; reduce gaps between men and women; engage females as leaders and implementing partners; and cre-ate effective monitoring and evaluation metrics that hold us accountable for delivering results for women and other marginalized groups.

plots), different sources of incomes, and the capacity to control the choice of foods being prepared and consumed are better able to improve their household’s food security and nutrition.6 Approaches that systematically and visibly reduce key gender gaps and ensure that women are given the tools, resources, and opportunities to lead and participate are critical to the success of our efforts to achieve sustainable change.

Functioning institutions of good governance and democratic accountability are essential to developing a country’s adaptive capacity and its ability to address and reduce risk. Good gover-nance requires institutions and processes that are transparent, accountable, and responsive to the people they serve and that promote positive state-society relationships (including a strong civil society and a vibrant private sector). Governance capacity determines the ability of the state to respond effectively to cri-ses and to address the long-term development needs required to effectively address recurrent issues. Furthermore, good governance is crucial to prevent and mitigate confl ict, which plays a detrimental role in many of the communities where we are applying a resilience approach and which has, in past efforts to build resilience, stood decisively in the way of sustainable progress.

Any approach that seeks to build resilience must be informed by confl ict dynamics, as humanitarian need may be great in areas emerging from confl ict or still fragile. Programming that integrates confl ict resolution and peace building, and strength-ens institutions of good governance, plays an important role in contributing to the sustainability of development gains. In fragile states where these challenges are particularly acute, the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States7 provides both a norma-tive framework and top-level guidance for focusing the com-bined efforts of host country leaders and international donors on inclusive politics and strengthening institutions of governance, which are essential to building states, peace, and resilience.

The links between the many important factors required to build resilience are complex. The challenge is to determine which institutional, policy, and political constraints pose the most signifi -cant impediments to building resilience and which are amenable

Building Resilience:

The Role of Disaster Risk Reduction

Disaster risk reduction (DRR) interventions are aimed at reducing the risk associated with specifi c types of hazards and disasters. In contrast to general develop-ment programs or broader resilience programming, DRR programs focus on potential hazards or shocks and generally target groups that are particularly vulner-able to these hazards and risks. USAID’s DRR programs focus specifi cally on (1) prioritizing and strengthening early warning, preparedness, mitigation, and prevention;

(2) integrating preparedness and mitigation with disaster response, early recovery, and transitions to foster resil-ience; and (3) supporting diversifi ed livelihood strategies.

For instance, a DRR program might assist a community living in a seismically active zone with devising protocols and procedures to respond to earthquakes or tsunamis.

Similarly, a DRR program might assist city planners in fl ood-prone areas with shoring up rural and urban infra-structure to mitigate the negative impacts of fl ooding.

Resilience, on the other hand, seeks to reduce risk in a broader sense by strengthening the ability of people, households, communities, countries, and systems to cope with both anticipated and unanticipated nega-tive shocks across a wider range of different areas of intervention. While DRR programs are central to the goal of building resilience, they are not suffi cient in and of themselves. Becoming resilient requires a range of approaches to help communities develop the capacity to manage the range of challenges that threaten stabil-ity, whether sudden or longer term, urban or rural, natural or human-made. DRR programs are one part of the solution; to achieve resilience in any given area, a broader concerted and coordinated effort by both development and humanitarian actors is required. These approaches should integrate DRR with a diverse combi-nation of other interdependent activities that contribute to increasing adaptive capacity, improving the ability to address and reduce risk, and improving the social and economic conditions of vulnerable populations.

Pineapple pioneer Masum Ahmed showcases his contoured pineapple fi eld in Hail Haor, Bangladesh.

Source: USAID

6 Ibnouf, Fatma. “The Role of Women in Providing and Improving Household Food Security in Sudan: Implications for Reducing Hunger and Malnutrition.” Journal of Inter-national Women’s Studies, Web. http://www.bridgew.edu/soas/jiws/May09/SudanFoodSecurity.pdf.

7 Find more information on the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States at http://www.aideffectiveness.org/busanhlf4/about/new-deal-for-engagement-in-fragile-states.html.

to reform and change through programmatic interventions.

This includes deciding the appropriate level at which to engage.

Often, communities that face recurrent crisis are also areas that receive limited political attention. Sustainable progress requires a deliberate shift in this dynamic. It is the responsibility of govern-ments at all levels to ensure that these vulnerable communities receive the appropriate support, and it is the responsibility of international partners to support that transition to more robust engagement. Making an entire sector, system, or nation more resilient requires a complex level of engagement with host country partners that are able to exercise key state functions and demonstrate the political will for reform in areas where structural problems interfere with or undermine resilience.

SELECTING AREAS OF FOCUS

While the concept of resilience has broad applicability to many of the environments in which we work, this policy and program guidance is specifi cally focused on areas of recurrent crisis – the area of intersection where chronic poverty overlaps with shocks and stresses – and where high levels of humanitarian assistance have historically been dedicated and/or where shocks and stresses create signifi cant loss.

The initial application of this policy and program guidance is focused on the Horn of Africa and the Sahel, where there is a clear and signifi cant commitment from partner countries and the international community to build resilience and where we have already begun to implement the approach and operational changes outlined in this guidance. We also recognize the need for a resilience approach in other areas where we work. For example, approximately 80 percent of global disaster-related economic losses occur in Asia. The nature of shocks and stresses that typically affect Asia, for example, may be different than those in the Horn of Africa or the Sahel or other regions. By under-taking the operational agenda described in this guidance and applying it to the contexts of different regions, USAID has the opportunity to build resilience in a diverse set of countries and regions around the world. Recognizing the broader applicability of this work, we have committed to identifying additional focus countries or regions following the issuance of this guidance.

There is signifi cant support across USAID for the approach outlined in this guidance, and many of our missions have been building resilience at the household and community levels for some time. In addition, disaster risk reduction and climate change resilience programs have created a foundation from which we can expand our focus. The commitment of our staff to apply a resilience agenda is refl ective of our conviction that this approach has the potential to exponentially increase our effectiveness and impact.

We also recognize the need to develop a “proof of concept” for the approach presented in this guidance and are aware of the signifi cant investments of time, human, and fi nancial resources and attention from leaders at all levels that achieving success will require. Therefore, we will intentionally focus the initial application of this guidance on a limited number of countries and regions, allowing us to fully and systematically develop an evidence base. A small but diverse set of focus countries will allow us to be informed by a variety of circumstances that will contribute to this evidence base. These countries will be chosen based on conversations between headquarters and our fi eld missions. USAID will rely on a series of criteria for identifying and prioritizing additional focus countries, including those outlined in the box below:

Recurrent Crisis

• Historically high levels of USAID humanitarian assistance in areas of chronic vulnerability

Vulnerability

• High rates of chronic poverty

• Persistently high acute malnutrition

• Persistent humanitarian caseloads

• Confl ict/fragility risk

• Exposure to hazards, including natural hazards

Enabling Environment

• Political will and institutional performance

• Effective and responsive leadership at the local, national, and regional levels

• Resilience activities already under way by partner countries and communities

• Minimum level of security exists to achieve resilience objectives

Comparative Advantage

• Existing USAID humanitarian programs

• Existing USAID development programs

• Programs, presence, and capabilities of other U.S. Government agencies

CASE STUDY: THE HORN OF AFRICA JOINT PLANNING CELL

The human and economic toll of the 2011 drought in the Horn of Africa was a stark reminder of the consequences of resource degradation, reduced access to and competition over range land resources, climate change, weak gover-nance, and a history of marginalization and underinvestment in the dry lands. Responses to previous droughts, such as the Greater Horn of Africa Initiative in the early 1990s, had limited long-term impact. Determined to do business differently, USAID established a Horn of Africa Joint Planning Cell (JPC) to identify new ways of utilizing humanitarian and development assistance around the shared aim of building resilience among chronically vulnerable populations by comprehensively addressing the root causes of their vulnerability and facilitating inclusive economic growth.

A key moment in the JPC’s efforts was the articulation of a shared framework for building resilience in the dry lands of the Horn of Africa between our humanitarian relief and development experts. This framework was based on analysis and understanding of the dynamics of change in pastoralist livelihood systems. Once agreed to, the possi-bilities for layering, integrating, and sequencing a wide range of existing humanitarian and development efforts with new investments around the shared aim of building resilience became clear, and the humanitarian and development sides of USAID worked in a more coherent and strategic manner than ever before. The very act of humanitarian and development experts engaging in this type of joint analysis and planning has demonstrated to all involved the power of bringing together the diverse perspectives, talents, and expertise within the Agency.

Doing business differently has already borne fruit. Most notably, humanitarian relief and recovery programs are no longer conceived of as an end in themselves, but as a foundation and platform upon which new and existing resil-ience and development investments must and will build. As an example, USAID has strategically layered new resil-ience and economic growth investments in Kenya’s arid lands on top of existing World Food Programme Food for Asset programs funded by the Offi ce of Food for Peace and sequenced these investments to build on the successes of the Offi ce of Foreign Disaster Assistance’s (OFDA’s) 3-year Arid Lands Recovery Program. A new arid lands health program and a jointly funded OFDA and USAID/Kenya water program round out the suite of layered, se-quenced, and integrated humanitarian and development investments.

Source: Neil Thomas/USAID

CASE STUDY: THE SAHEL JOINT PLANNING CELL

Signifi cant chronic vulnerability in the Sahel has taken hold as a result of a combination of factors, including poverty, marginalization, weak governance, low rainfall, population pressure and high population growth, food price volatil-ity, and climate variability. In an effort to move beyond addressing the symptoms of these factors, the Sahel Joint Planning Cell (JPC) stood up in early 2012 and established a multidisciplinary team from across USAID to develop a strategy for building resilience in the region. Participants include USAID’s Offi ce of Foreign Disaster Assistance;

Food for Peace; the Bureau for Food Security; the Bureau for Economic Growth, Education, and Environment; the Global Health Bureau; the West Africa, Mali, and Senegal Missions; and USAID staff in Niger and Burkina Faso.

The JPC seeks to layer, integrate, and sequence existing humanitarian and development assistance to support resilience building efforts and is working to prioritize countries and livelihood zones for additional resilience invest-ments based on an analysis of chronic vulnerability, USAID’s comparative advantage, and the enabling environment.

The team is focused on leveraging local resilience adaptations already under way. The expansion of Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration and water harvesting – practices that have resulted in the “re-greening” of more than 5 mil-lion hectares in Niger and Burkina Faso – provide prominent examples of adaptations.

Based on lessons learned from the Horn of Africa, the Sahel JPC is working toward identifying various models for sequencing, layering, and integrating humanitarian and development programs to build resilience. A robust learning agenda will help identify innovations and best practices in this regard.

The Sahel JPC is coordinating with regional institutions, national governments, U.N. agencies, NGOs, community-based organizations, research institutions, and other partners through its participation in the European Union-led Global Alliance for Resilience in the Sahel (AGIR-Sahel) partnership. Given the size and breadth of the challenge in the Sahel, this strategic coordination is critical. It will also ensure that investments in building resilience in the Sahel by USAID and others align with existing policies and strategies, including regional and national Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) compacts.

Recurring Zone of Drought in the Region

This guidance and its implementation are guided by key resilience principles that refl ect our core values. A set of four resilience principles will be applied across our resilience work.

Key Resilience Principles

Build Resilience as a Common Objective

We will build resilience as a common objective across development and humanitarian assistance pro-grams. To achieve this, we will bring together our relief and development teams to develop a common understanding of risks and opportunities and identify ways to layer, integrate, and sequence programs.

Critically, we will better coordinate humanitarian and development funding while maintaining the integ-rity of these funding streams.

Create and Foster Linkages

Building resilience requires the involvement of stakeholders at every level – from community members to international policy makers. At each level, we will promote inclusive dialogue, with a focus on promot-ing inclusive, accountable governance and on reaching the marginalized and most vulnerable. We will work to ensure that there are appropriate vertical linkages between the different levels, as national and regional action is critical, but this action must be responsive and informed by community needs.

Enable Host Country/ Regional Ownership

Good governance, political will, and leadership by national and regional actors are especially critical to achieving success.8 Resilience programming should be rooted in the society in which it occurs, draw-ing on the ideas, resources, and desires of local stakeholders, including the most vulnerable and often excluded groups. It is critical that our efforts help build the capacity of host country systems and enable countries to take the lead in their own development. Country-owned and -led strategies can help create a “double compact” between the international community and host country governments and between those governments and their citizens.

Focus on the Long Term

Building resilience requires an investment of time that should not be understated, and our ability to build resilience in the short term should not be oversold. Thus, our approach to building resilience must be sustainable and effective over the long run, focusing on continued progress and achieving short-term milestones along the way. We must employ longer-term planning horizons and consider predicted future trends, such as anticipated climate change, that will impact our work.

8 Building Resilience for Aid Effectiveness, 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, November 30, 2011. http://www.aideffectiveness.org/busanhlf4/images/stories/Side_ event_47_summary.pdf

As laid out by the USAID Policy Framework 2011–2015,9 USAID also has a set of core operational principles that are being ap-plied across our entire portfolio. In addition to the resilience principles, these operational principles are key considerations in our resilience work.

Core Operational Principles

Promote Gender Equality and Female Empowerment

Research shows that shocks due to disasters reinforce and perpetuate gender inequality, as shocks can disproportionately affect women’s access to income, assets, and other resources. As there are signifi cant differences in how women cope with shocks as opposed to men,10 we will employ an approach that reduces gaps between males and females, empowers women, and promotes inclusive growth.

Apply Science, Technology, and Innovation

Science and technological innovations are critical in identifying vulnerabilities, improving and using early warning systems, and accelerating response. Innovations such as mobile money and drought-resistant crops can play important roles in building resilience. We will promote and pilot new technologies and innovations in addition to scaling up proven ones.

Apply Selectivity and Focus

We will ensure that our resources are strategically invested in priority regions, countries, and subnational areas; these decisions will be made by our fi eld missions in collaboration with head-quarters. We will base these decisions on criteria laid out in this paper, including levels of persistent humanitarian assistance, chronic vulnerability, confl ict/fragility risk, USAID’s existing capacity, and the availability and willingness of host-country partners.

Measure and Evaluate Impact

We will ensure accountability and an effective allocation of resources by informing our decisions with evidence, data, and the fi ndings of publicly disclosed evaluations. We will also continue to improve knowledge management in order to better catalogue and utilize those institutional lessons learned.

Build in Sustainability from the Start

We will promote ownership by strengthening the capacity of host countries to manage and lead, as no strategy imposed from the outside can bring about sustainable, positive change. Our interven-tions will be tailored to those affected and the particular shock they face by incorporating local and traditional knowledge,11 taking into account diverse needs and priorities, especially among the most vulnerable.

Apply Integrated Approaches

In our efforts to build resilience, we will consider humanitarian assistance in strategic planning and project design, improve coordination between humanitarian and development assistance, and develop budgets that recognize the interdependence of humanitarian and development assistance.

We will utilize three approaches to accomplish this: layered programs across sectors and funding streams; integrated programming to address multidimensional challenges; and strategic sequencing of programs to maximize long-term impact.

Leverage “Solution- Holders” and Partner Strategically

We will promote the strategic division of labor with a wide range of partners to improve harmo-nization and avoid the duplication of effort. We must collectively align with regional and national plans to work toward common goals, and these will best be defi ned by our country partners. We will work to create and sustain partnerships between humanitarian and development actors as well as continue to work closely with our interagency colleagues and engage with a wide range of actors, including the private sector and civil society.

9 To read the USAID Policy Framework 2011–2015, visit http://transition.usaid.gov/policy/USAID_PolicyFramework.PDF.

10 FAO. Deriving Food Security Information from National Household Budget Surveys: Experiences, Achievements, Challenges (2008); Sibrian, R. (ed), FAO. Food Security Information for Decision-Making: Measuring Resilience, Concept Note on the Resilience Tool. 2010.

11 Gòmez-Baggethun, E., et al. Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Community Resilience to Environmental Extremes: A Case Study in Doñana, SW Spain. Global Environ.

Change (2012), doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2012.02.005.

Over USAID’s 50 years, multiple efforts to improve develop-ment outcomes in areas of recurrent crisis have provided a rich set of lessons that inform this guidance. From the drought re-sponse in the Sahel in the early 1970s to the Greater Horn of Africa Initiative in the early 1990s to the “Breaking the Cycle of Famine” efforts in Ethiopia in 2003–2004, we know that a key barrier in past efforts has been the physical and often philo-sophical divide between disaster and development experts with separate offi ces, programming systems, and objectives pre-venting collaboration to the extent that is required.

Today, based on this history of successes and challenges, USAID has a renewed focus on building bridges across our operations to overcome these barriers. Successfully building resilience requires coordinated, integrated teams of humanitarian and development professionals working closely together. This policy and program guidance focuses on allowing suffi cient fl exibility in our institutional process to foster this collaboration. Working primarily through the Agency’s core policy, planning, budgeting, and learning processes, we believe that we can make signifi cant strides toward integrating resilience more effectively into our work and improving coordination. We intend, in part, to judge the success of this policy and program guidance against our abil-ity to do this. We have put special emphasis on the importance of leadership in fostering a fl exible, problem solving approach and moving past operational bottlenecks, with a goal of empow-ering people close to the solutions.

Building resilience requires an iterative process in which development assistance and humanitarian assistance are…