2. Approaches of
Resilience Building
Elora Ferdous
Regional Change Lear- Resilience Building
Presented at the Christian Aid – Regional Consultation on Resilience – South Asia
06-08 Feb 2013, Kathmandu, Nepal

3. What’s different about resilience?
Is it just good development, or rebranding
existing work?
What does a ‘resilience programme’ look like?
For Oxfam, resilience is the desired outcome,
rather than a particular type of programme.
The key is to start by considering the risks
that a community faces, and work to reduce
them.
Page 3

4. What is Resilience?
Oxfam defines resilience as the ability of women, men
and children to realize their rights and improve their
wellbeing despite shocks, stresses and uncertainty. Thus
resilience:
Page 4

5. Resilience ..
Addresses Is not just about
coping which is
shocks (e.g. often about selling
disasters, Is not just about
assets, nor is it early warning
conflict, food about ‘bouncing systems, and
price volatility) back’. drought resistant
seeds),
and stresses . People must be Is ultimately
able to ‘jump - resilience
(climate requires changes about people,
beyond’ and to feel to the structural
change, confident in their causes of
ecosystem capacity to provide vulnerability and
decline, support for their thus involves
families regardless challenging the
insecurity), and of shocks and status quo.
uncertainty stresses
Page 5

6. Resilience building is a process
Page 6

7. Key to Resilience building:
Analyzing Risks?
Risks can be political, economic or environmental and include:
• Conflict, insecurity, violence and tensions;
• Volatility in food and commodity markets;
• Natural disasters;
• Climate Change;
• Crime, corruption;
• Overuse of resources, ecosystem decline and degradation.
Page 7

8. Risk Analysis at the Core of Programming
Risk analysis needs to:
• be substantially based on community viewpoints and put
community voices at the centre
• reflect power dynamics, vulnerability assessments, inequality,
gender and the most vulnerable groups
• look at current and future risk and recognise multiple hazards,
long term stresses and uncertainty
• updated, to reflect increased understanding of complexities
and changing contexts as the programme evolves.
Page 8

9. BUILDING RESILIENCE WITH EQUALITY
• Resilience must lead to with the most vulnerable, as they
have the hardest time in recovering from shocks and often are
excluded from accessing the means that can protect them
from destitution.
•
• Secondly, it will require the meeting of basic rights.
Everyone has an equal right to life, liberty and security as well
as a standard of living adequate for health and well-being,
including food, clothing, housing and medical care and
necessary social services, and the right to security in the
event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, or
old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond
control
Page 9

10. • Thirdly, it requires challenging power imbalances which
keep people poor, marginalised and therefore vulnerable.
More powerful groups are able to capture more government
services, control markets and exercise privileged influence
over the structure of society
• Fourthly, it will entail leveraging resources to fund this.
Greater resources need to be directed towards areas where
there is a greater need for them
Page 10

11. Social protection as a pre-requisite
for resilience..
• Social protection programmes are particularly important for
building resilience – they are pro-poor and pro-growth
Page 11

12. Empowerment and building effective
institutions
• Access to resources and rights is governed by institutions.
Institutions reflect power structures within society and are not
always the most democratic, nor always provide rights and
resources according to need.
Page 12

13. ENSURING ASSETS AND ACCESS TO
RESOURCES FOR THE MOST VULNERABLE
• Access to land is particularly important for both the rural and
urban poor because it can provide a means of production,
shelter, dignity, and a means for accumulation.
• Natural resources are a key to resilience building for poor
people. Rural livelihoods and well-being are directly reliant on
the diversity and health of ecosystems and the services they
provide (e.g. fuel, food, etc.), and also most vulnerable to
changes in those services
Page 13

14. Some of the barriers of Resilience
building:
• Development and humanitarian work is entirely separate.
They work in Silos creating confusion between ways of
working
• Aid funding streams – not fit for resilience work
• Resilience-building requires long-term (in the range six to ten
years) flexible funding, often capable of addressing immediate
and longer-term needs simultaneously
Page 14

15. Risk as Humanitarian issue..?
• The central problem for risk is that it has been seen, as a
humanitarian issue, and not been brought into the
development discourse.
• In order to strengthen the essential political dimension, risk
and resilience need to be integrated into development policy
and practice at all levels.
Page 15

16. Where we start the Resilience building..
48 hr EFSL ends
assessment/ ..Resilience
Long term
building stars
Disaster (Resilience Development
with
building programme
development
starts here) planning
Page 16

17. Tools we would be using for Resilience
Building
• PCVA
• EMMA
• HEA
• GEM
Page 17

18. Who we should work with?
Within Oxfam Who are major IFPRI: Pakistan
resource providers Nepal
• EFSL On Climate change
• Economic analysis IRRI: Bangladesh
Justice • IFPRI CIAT: South East
• DRR • IRRI Asia
• Long term • CIAT
Development
planning
Page 18

19. Measuring Resilience
• Still developing....
Page 19

20. Risk management is key
• National governments, donors, humanitarian and
development organisations and civil society must put risk
faced by the most vulnerable at the heart of all long-term
planning and humanitarian and development work
• All development and humanitarian actors – donors,
governments, international organisations and NGOs – should
only fund and implement work which seeks to reduce risk, and
provide greater support and resources to build peoples’
capacity to adapt.
Page 20

21. New ways of working
• Resilience is not what we do but how we do our work
• humanitarian and development actors need to develop joint
analyses and a single strategy.
• Donors and governments need to find new ways of providing
long term flexible funding.
• Governments need to work together to ensure that risk and
resilience are reflected in the post-2015 Millennium
Development Goals.
Page 21

22. Thank You
Page 22