Resources with a focus on Nutrition and Resilience

·       UNICEF Kenya policy brief on nutrition resilience by Peter Hailey, June 2015

This paper proposes that interventions aiming to develop nutrition resilience and resilience for nutrition should tackle acute and chronic nutrition deprivation at the same time and take a tri-track approach, with foundational Track One of nutrition specific and sensitive programs, a reliability focused Track Two where risks and vulnerabilities to covariate shocks ensure reliable livelihoods through seasons and shocks and Track Three emergency response only for extra-ordinary shocks. This policy paper is not online but can be shared upon request.

·       Emergency Nutrition Network (ENN) nutrition and resilience scoping study

This short study report (click here) describes nutrition as both a driver for, and an outcome of, resilience. Several commonalities are identified between nutrition and resilience: seeking to address causes of problems across all layers of society (from individual to population); seeking comprehensive solutions to problems that require orchestrated efforts across disciplines; the need for flexibility and responsiveness to deal with new or worse stresses; and an emphasis on a long-term approach where gender equality and gender empowerment are key drivers of change.

This paper proposes how nutrition can strengthen resilience and how resilience can strengthen nutrition. In particular: a) systematically building multi-hazard risk assessments into programs; b) requiring the undertaking of sound causal and context analyses (especially in spanning all levels of causality for undernutrition); which should then inform: c) more holistic approaches to undernutrition (and less differentiation between stunting and wasting); d) longer-term, more flexible funding; e) consideration of how nutrition indices could illuminate understanding of resilience capacities at individual, household and population levels; and f) greater attention on the outcomes of programs rather than outputs.

·       FAO 2014 paper on strengthening the links between Nutrition and Resilience in Food and Agriculture

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This paper aimed at bringing together the thinking on nutrition and resilience from a food and agriculture perspective and to discuss the linkages between the two agendas from a conceptual, strategic and operational perspective. The paper argues that good nutrition is both an essential “input” for resilience and an outcome of resilience. It highlights key areas of convergence between the two concepts as well as opportunities to enhance the nutritional impact of resilience-building programming in the context of the food and agriculture sector.

·       The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and its 2020 Vision Initiative on building resilience for food and nutrition security

IFPRI has lots of resources on the resilience topic including a recent book (Click here) with a chapter on improving resilience to nutritional shocks (Click here) and on enhancing the links between nutrition and resilience (Click here).

IFPRI also has a web site focusing on their resilience for food and nutrition security initiative (Click here).

·Climate Resilience and Food Security: A framework for planning and monitoring by the International Institute of Sustainable Development (IISD) 2013

Click here

This very interesting paper notably summarizes some key resilience approaches and notions, including in its broadest sense of resilience (not strictly from a climate adaptation perspective). This paper describes an analytical framework and a simple tool to identify the key elements of a complex food system and assess their resilience to climate shocks and stresses. A useful read for anyone looking into planning an assessment of community livelihoods and resources sources, how livelihoods and resources interact to influence food access, and of household-level utilization of available foods. The paper helps understand how some nutrition and food security aspects important toward resilience can be monitored and therefore gives some clues toward designing programs and intervention that build resilience with a nutrition lens.