Dear HLPE-FSN,
I am writing on behalf of the Resilience Analysis for Action (RESA) team, situated within the FAO Agrifood Economics and Policy (ESA) division, which works closely with the Office of Emergencies and Resilience (OER).
On the ways of defining resilience, UN defines resilience as “the ability of individuals, households, communities, cities, institutions, systems and societies to prevent, anticipate, absorb, adapt and transform positively, efficiently and effectively when faced with a wide range of risks…”. Following this framework, the Resilience Index Measurement and Analysis (RIMA) framework operationalized resilience as “the capacity of a household to bounce back to a previous level of well-being (for instance food security) after a shock”. This aligns with the Resilience Measurement Technical Working Group (RM-TWG), the expert consultation group established under the Food Security Information Network (https://www.fsinplatform.org/), which defines resilience as: “the capacity that ensures adverse stressors and shocks do not have long-lasting adverse development consequences”. Resilience should encompass not only the capacity to recover, adapt, and transform, in response to shocks and stresses, but also the capacity to prevent and anticipate these events. This broader perspective underscores resilience as an ongoing capacity, something one has at their disposal both before and after shocks and stresses occur.
In this context, the Shiny RIMA tool (https://www.fao.org/agrifood-economics/areas-of-work/rima/shiny/en/) provides a quantitative estimation of resilience capacity to food insecurity at the household level. Additionally, it assesses the resilience structural matrix of households, identifying the key determinants of their resilience. The four resilience pillars which underscore the resilience capacity of households are: Access to Basic Services (ABS), Assets (AST), Social Safety Nets (SSN), and Adaptive Capacity (AC).
Since the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, endorsed by the UN General Assembly in 2015, countries have been developing policies that enhance early warning systems and anticipatory actions for risk management. These efforts aim to reduce the exposure and vulnerability of vulnerable households to prevalent hazards, while also considering “residual risk” and devising strategies for potential shocks.
The Country Programming Frameworks provide valuable insights into future policy priorities. These frameworks are developed collaboratively by FAO country offices, national ministries, and local experts to identify key areas of focus at the country level. From these frameworks, it is evident that countries are developing policies to address specific hazards with consequences at the local level. These policies support households in mitigating the negative impact of shocks, while also supporting them to avoid the adoption of negative coping strategies in the face of shocks. However, it is crucial for policies to also enhance households' capacity to withstand future shocks, thereby reducing the consumption and welfare volatilities associated with such events.
Below are links to some explicative resilience evaluations that have utilized the RIMA methodology to measure resilience to food insecurity. RIMA has been validated over time as a good predictor of food security (Ciani and Romano, 2011; d’Errico et al., 2016) and has been employed in numerous case studies. Other analyses have shown that the Resilience Capacity Index (RCI) is largely correlated with food security and other poverty indicators, making it a valid tool for estimating the capacity of a household to bounce back to a previous level of well-being (for instance food security) after a shock.
- Mondal et al., 2023. Developing micro level resilience index for Indian Sundarban adopting resilience indicators for measurement and analysis (RIMA) methodology. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geogeo.2022.100129
- Sibrian et al., 2021. Household Resilience to Food and Nutrition Insecurity in Central America and the Caribbean. doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/su13169086
- Ngesa et al, 2021. Characteristics and Determinants of the Resilience of Smallholder Farmers: Lessons from Application of the RIMA II Methodology in Eastern Africa. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57281-5_67
Kind regards,
Joanna Mihaylova
Ms. Joanna Mihaylova