A year and a half ago, Amin Malik, Monitoring & Evaluation Officer based in FAO Rome, introduced a new tool in Pakistan called Resilience Index Measurement & Analysis (RIMA). It is a quantitative tool developed by FAO about 12 years ago to measure the level of rural households’ ability to cope with the shocks and crises that affect their food security. Since then, FAO Pakistan has conducted three studies using RIMA covering more than 3000 households.
 
Shortly after introducing RIMA, Amin joined FAO team in Pakistan. His arrival in Pakistan could not happen at a better time. He introduced RIMA in November 2021, and just after eight months, floods hit a large part of the country. All three studies were conducted before the floods. They became a baseline against which it could be measured how people recover from shocks. These studies will also help in assessing how communities in Pakistan have built their resilience to the 2022 floods, how they are progressing after the floods, and what kind of interventions are required to strengthen their ability to cope with future floods.

In an interview, published in February 2023 in FAO’s intranet section ‘Country Story’, he spoke about why it is important to measure resilience, important findings from the three RIMA studies conducted in Pakistan and their relevance in context of 2022’s floods.

He explained that when rural households are impacted by climatic shocks, particularly, when their frequencies and intensity have increased, it becomes very important to try to see how people cope with climatic shocks and how do they recover from them.  What are the things that cause the highest impact on their livelihood and food security?  At the same time, we need to see that what are the things that make some households recover from shocks quicker or better than others. What would make the impact of shocks on them minimum and recovery faster.  RIMA is a tool that provides us with such analysis. It enables us to see the asset base of the household, kind of support they receive from the government as well as from their relatives and communities. How this mix of all assets, social safety nets they have around them, basic social services they receive in terms of education, health and access to market, how all these things together provide the farming households with the required ability to absorb shocks and resilience capacity needed to cope with climatic shocks.

Amin further shared that based on the findings of the three RIMA studies conducted by FAO Pakistan in the last two years in Sindh and Punjab provinces, it can safely be said that assets are the most important determinant of resilience. Assets pillar of resilience is the livelihood of the people; the land they hold natural resources like forests and rain land around them, agriculture production and productivity, livestock holdings, various sources of income etc. This clearly shows the relevance to FAO’s mandate in Pakistan. That is, combating climate change, building resilience and supporting rural livelihood of the people.

He concluded on the note that FAO Pakistan Program is already doing a lot in terms of supporting resilience of rural households through; introducing good agricultural practices, capacity building of rural population that will enable them to actually absorb the shocks, supporting farmers by protecting their assets through vaccination of animals against diseases and establishing strategic partnerships in building resilience.  

Detailed interview of Malik Amin can be found at;
https://intranet.fao.org/fao_communications/country_stories/detail/c/99079/