Although climate-driven hazards have been widely implicated as a key threat to food security in the delta regions of the developing world, the empirical basis of this assertion has centred predominantly on the food availability dimension of food security. Little is known if climatic hazards could affect the food access of delta-resident households and who is likely to be at risk and why. We explored these questions by using the data from a sample of households resident within the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) delta in Bangladesh. We used an index-based analytical approach by drawing on the vulnerability and food security literature. We computed separate vulnerability indices for flood, cyclone, and riverbank erosion and assessed their effects on household food access through regression modelling. All three vulnerability types demonstrated significant negative effects on food access; however, only flood vulnerability could significantly reduce a household's food access below an acceptable threshold. Households that were less dependent on natural resources for their livelihoodsincluding unskilled day labourers and grocery shop ownerswere significantly more likely to have unacceptable level of food access due to floods. Adaptive capacity, measured as a function of household asset endowments, proved more important in explaining food access than the exposuresensitivity to flood itself. Accordingly, we argue that improving food security in climatic hazard-prone areas of developing country deltas would require moving beyond agriculture or natural resources focus and promoting hazard-specific, all-inclusive and livelihood-focused asset-building interventions. We provide an example of a framework for such interventions and reflect on our analytical approach.
We explored if there were lessons to be learned for food security assessment and interventions by studying household food insecurity 'coping strategies' in conflict contexts. Data were collected using 55 indepth interviews during 2016-2017 from three regions in Libya -a country affected by protracted conflicts since 2011. Thematic analyses of the data revealed eight major categories of coping strategies, some of which resembled those reported in the global literature. However, some strategies, both negative and positive, were 'unique' to the conflict context. Implications of the findings for food security assessment and interventions in areas of protracted conflicts are discussed.
International donors have spent billions of dollars over the past four decades in developing and/or reforming the agricultural extension service delivery arrangements in developing countries. However, many of these reforms, supported through short-term projects, became unsustainable once aid funding had ceased. The unavailability of recurrent funding has predominantly been highlighted in the literature as the key reason for this undesirable outcome, while little has been written about institutional factors. The purpose of this article is to examine the usefulness of taking an institutional perspective in explaining the unsustainability of donor-supported extension reforms and derive lessons for improvement. Using a framework drawn from the school of institutionalism in a Bangladeshi case study, we have found that a reform becomes unsustainable because of poor demands for extension information and advice; missing, weak, incongruent, and perverse institutional frameworks governing the exchange of extension goods (services); and a lack of institutional learning and change during the reform process. Accordingly, we have argued that strategies for sustainable extension reforms should move beyond financial considerations and include such measures as making extension goods (services) more tangible and monetary in nature, commissioning in-depth studies to learn about local institutions, crafting new institutions and/or reforming the weak and perverse institutions prevailing in developing countries. We emphasize the need to address three categories of institutions-regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive-and call for an alignment among them. We further argue that, in order to be sustainable, a reform should take a systemic approach in institutional capacity building and, for this to be possible, adopt a long-term program approach, as opposed to a short-term project approach.
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