The Household Economy Approach (HEA) is a tool routinely used to monitor household-level vulnerability to food security shocks in rural sub-Saharan Africa. Efforts are now focused on applying the HEA in urban contexts. Previous work has shown specific limitations to this method when applied to cities, where livelihoods are diverse, social capital is especially important for managing shocks, and multiple hazards interact. The paper proposes a household resilience assessment tool that incorporates elements of the HEA to provide potential for a joinedup rural-urban output, but that includes additional data and specific analytical approaches in recognition of urban contexts. The tool is piloted in Niamey, Niger. The experience showed collection of the required data to be challenging. Results identified low levels of resilience amongst flood-exposed households associated with inequalities in social capital ties and variable access to food and security postflood. Responding to loss, households expended savings and took on debt. This has implications for focused resilience building and flood response planning.
COVID-19 recovery is an opportunity to enhance life chances by Building Back Better, an objective promoted by the UN and deployed politically at national level. To help understand emergent and intentional opportunities to Build Back Better, we propose a research agenda drawing from geographical thinking on social contracts, assemblage theory and the politics of knowledge. This points research towards the ways in which everyday and professional knowledge cocreation constrains vision and action. Whose knowledge is legitimate, how legitimacy is ascribed and the place of science, the media and government in these processes become sites for progressive Building Back Better.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.