a b s t r a c tClimate change is expected to have severe effects on the populations of developing countries because many of these depend heavily on agriculture for income, have large impoverished rural populations which rely on agriculture for subsistence, and are financially and technically least equipped to adapt to changing conditions. Planning to target measures to support adaptation to reduce the impact of climate change on poverty and food insecurity requires methods of identifying vulnerable households. This paper describes an established approach to vulnerability assessment, the 'Household Economy Approach' (HEA) and its potential application to the management of climate change in developing countries. The HEA is widely used by Governments and others, chiefly in Africa, for the assessment of household vulnerability to poverty and food security. HEA uses a model based on Amartya Sen's entitlement theory and detailed social and economic data to simulate the impact of weather related, price, policy and other shocks on household income and food access, to provide information for decision making. In developing countries climate change will be experienced in terms of increased climate variability and an increased frequency of extreme events. HEA provides a way of managing the effects of year to year shocks to prevent impoverishment and the erosion of household resilience. It also provides the information needed to develop scenarios to support the design of policies to support longer term adaptation. HEA data has already been collected for large areas of Africa.
Heatwaves are as impactful as other hazards, such as floods, but reporting their characteristics and impacts, as well as understand their risk is challenging because they are an invisible physical phenomenon (Brimicombe et al., 2021). They are also considered to be widely underreported in official databases, reports, and in news media (Harrington & Otto, 2020;Khare et al., 2015). However, robust reporting is essential not only for communicating the risk of heatwaves, but also to develop effective policy and action (
Storylines are plausible descriptions of past or future events and can be used to characterize uncertainty through discrete possible futures. They thereby bridge the gap between global-scale future projections and local-scale impacts, providing decision-makers with useful information about potential impacts in multivariate systems despite large swathes of missing data. Here we demonstrate the storyline approach using the case of household food security in the Caprivi region of Namibia, an example of a complex system with multiple interacting drivers. We develop a network characterizing influences on household food security, highlighting drivers that are affected by the local weather (with climate understood to constitute the collection of possible weather states). The network is used to understand the storyline leading to household impacts in 2013-14, a consumption year affected by flooding, and the effects of a range of interventions across wealth groups. Counterfactual storylines are also developed to characterize potential impacts under different local and national conditions. Through this we demonstrate how a storyline approach can embed local contextual information to provide decision-makers with comprehensible and assessable information about possible futures and interventions. We highlight the importance of identifying common drivers, in this case the local weather, in producing plausible impact storylines.
Summary Improved capacity to predict drought‐induced famines has not led to a concomitant improvement in famine prevention. In a comparative study of five African countries, this article argues that the failure to translate more information into timely and appropriate response is explained by a myriad of institutional and ‐ crucially ‐ political obstacles. It is often negotiation over conflicting interests between donors and governments of recipient countries which determines the timing and level of famine response; the role of information becomes peripheral to much of the decision‐making process. Policy implications of the study include better preplanning of response and decentralization of response capacity, as well as joint ventures between donors and governments to provide ‐ and hence own ‐ early warning information. Resumé La sécurité alimentaire: qu'ils mangent de l'information L'amélioration dans les capacités de prévision des famines résultant des sécheresses n'aurait pas pour autant mené à une amélioration correspondante dans la prévention des famines. Par le biais d'une étude comparative de cinq pays africains, le présent article propose que le manquement à traduire un plus grand nombre d'informations en une réponse utile et appropriée serait expliqué par un très grand nombre d'obstacles institutionnels et, crucialement, politiques. C'est souvent la negotiation à l'égard des conflits d'intérêts entre les donateurs et les gouvernements dans les pays donataires qui détermine l'incidence et l'importance de la réponse à la famine: le rôle de l'information devient plus ou moins marginal dans une grande partie du processus de prise des décisions. Les implications de l'étude en termes de la politique comprennent une meilleure avant‐planification de la réponse, ainsi que la décentralisation des moyens de réponse, en même temps que des projets liant paritairement les donateurs et les gouvernements de sorte que l'on puisse fournir, et donc posséder ‐ des informations plus précoces. Resumen Seguridad alimentaria: que coman información La mejorada capacidad para predecir situaciónes de hambre ocasionadas por la sequía no ha llevado a un mejoramiento concordante en la prevención del hambre. En un estudio comparativo de cinco países africanos, el artículo argumenta que el fracaso en el intento de transformar más información en respuestas apropiadas y oportunas se explica por una miríada de obstáculos institucionales y ‐ crucialmente ‐ políticos. A menudo, la negociación de intereses conflictivos entre los donantes y los gobiernos de los países beneficiarios determina el momento propicio y el nivel de la respuesta a la situación de hambre; el papel de la información se torna periférico con respecto a la mayor parte del proceso de toma de decisiónes. Las implicaciónes normativas del estudio incluyen el pre‐planeamiento de las respuestas y la descentralización de la capacidad de respuesta, así como proyectos conjuntos entre donantes y gobiernos para proveer ‐ y por tanto poseer ‐ información de alerta previa.
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