Does nutrition-sensitive social protection protection build longer-term resilience? Experimental evidence from Bangladesh
Does nutrition-sensitive social protection protection build longer-term resilience? Experimental evidence from Bangladesh

Author: Ahmed, Akhter U.

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2024-10-07

Total Pages: 57

ISBN-13:

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Evidence shows that cash and in-kind transfer programs increase food security while interventions are ongoing, including during or immediately after shocks. But less is known about whether receipt of these programs can have protective effects for household food security against shocks that occur several years after interventions end. We study the effects of a transfer program implemented as a cluster-randomized control trial in rural Bangladesh from 2012-2014 – the Transfer Modality Research Initiative (TMRI) – on food security in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We assess TMRI’s impacts at three post-program time points: before the shock (2018), amidst the shock (2021), and after the immediate effects of the shock (2022). We find that TMRI showed protective effects on household food security during and after the pandemic, but program design features “mattered”; positive impacts were only seen in the treatment arm that combined cash transfers with nutrition behavior change communication (Cash+BCC). Other treatment arms – cash only, and food only – showed no significant sustained effects on our household food security measures after the intervention ended, nor did they show protective effects during the pandemic. A plausible mechanism is that investments made by Cash+BCC households in productive assets – specifically livestock – increased their pre-shock resilience capacity.

Resilience for food and nutrition security
Resilience for food and nutrition security

Author: Fan, Shenggen

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2014-10-28

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 0896296784

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Economic shocks including food price shocks, environmental shocks, social shocks, political shocks, health shocks, and many other types of shocks hit poor people and communities around the world, compromising their efforts to improve their well-being. As shocks evolve and become more frequent or intense, they further threaten people’s food and nutrition security and their livelihoods. How do we help people and communities to become more resilient, to not only bounce back from shocks but to also to get ahead of them and improve their well-being so that they are less vulnerable to the next shock? How do we get better at coping with—and even thriving—in the presence of shocks?

The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2018
The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2018

Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.

Published: 2018-09-14

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 9251305722

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New evidence this year corroborates the rise in world hunger observed in this report last year, sending a warning that more action is needed if we aspire to end world hunger and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030. Updated estimates show the number of people who suffer from hunger has been growing over the past three years, returning to prevailing levels from almost a decade ago. Although progress continues to be made in reducing child stunting, over 22 percent of children under five years of age are still affected. Other forms of malnutrition are also growing: adult obesity continues to increase in countries irrespective of their income levels, and many countries are coping with multiple forms of malnutrition at the same time – overweight and obesity, as well as anaemia in women, and child stunting and wasting.

Adaptive Social Protection
Adaptive Social Protection

Author: Thomas Bowen

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2020-06-12

Total Pages: 155

ISBN-13: 1464815755

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Adaptive social protection (ASP) helps to build the resilience of poor and vulnerable households to the impacts of large, covariate shocks, such as natural disasters, economic crises, pandemics, conflict, and forced displacement. Through the provision of transfers and services directly to these households, ASP supports their capacity to prepare for, cope with, and adapt to the shocks they face—before, during, and after these shocks occur. Over the long term, by supporting these three capacities, ASP can provide a pathway to a more resilient state for households that may otherwise lack the resources to move out of chronically vulnerable situations. Adaptive Social Protection: Building Resilience to Shocks outlines an organizing framework for the design and implementation of ASP, providing insights into the ways in which social protection systems can be made more capable of building household resilience. By way of its four building blocks—programs, information, finance, and institutional arrangements and partnerships—the framework highlights both the elements of existing social protection systems that are the cornerstones for building household resilience, as well as the additional investments that are central to enhancing their ability to generate these outcomes. In this report, the ASP framework and its building blocks have been elaborated primarily in relation to natural disasters and associated climate change. Nevertheless, many of the priorities identified within each building block are also pertinent to the design and implementation of ASP across other types of shocks, providing a foundation for a structured approach to the advancement of this rapidly evolving and complex agenda.

2020 Global food policy report: Building inclusive food systems
2020 Global food policy report: Building inclusive food systems

Author: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2020-04-06

Total Pages: 110

ISBN-13: 089629367X

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Food systems are at a critical juncture—they are evolving quickly to meet growing and changing demand but are not serving everyone’s needs. Building more inclusive food systems can bring a wide range of economic and development benefits to all people, especially the poor and disadvantaged. IFPRI’s 2020 Global Food Policy Report examines the policies and investments and the growing range of tools and technologies that can promote inclusion. Chapters examine the imperative of inclusion, challenges faced by smallholders, youth, women, and conflict-affected people, and the opportunities offered by expanding agrifood value chains and national food system transformations. Critical questions addressed include: How can inclusive food systems help break the intergenerational cycle of poverty and malnutrition? \What can be done to strengthen the midstream of food value chains to improve rural access to jobs, markets, and services? Will Africa’s food systems generate sufficient jobs for the growing youth population? How can women be empowered within food system processes, from household decisions to policymaking? Can refugees and other conflict-affected people be integrated into food systems to help them rebuild their lives? How can national food system transformations contribute to greater dietary diversity, food safety, and food quality for all? Regional sections look at how inclusion can be improved around the world in 2020 and beyond. The report also presents interesting trends revealed by IFPRI’s food policy indicators and datasets.

Shock Waves
Shock Waves

Author: Stephane Hallegatte

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2015-11-23

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 1464806748

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Ending poverty and stabilizing climate change will be two unprecedented global achievements and two major steps toward sustainable development. But the two objectives cannot be considered in isolation: they need to be jointly tackled through an integrated strategy. This report brings together those two objectives and explores how they can more easily be achieved if considered together. It examines the potential impact of climate change and climate policies on poverty reduction. It also provides guidance on how to create a “win-win†? situation so that climate change policies contribute to poverty reduction and poverty-reduction policies contribute to climate change mitigation and resilience building. The key finding of the report is that climate change represents a significant obstacle to the sustained eradication of poverty, but future impacts on poverty are determined by policy choices: rapid, inclusive, and climate-informed development can prevent most short-term impacts whereas immediate pro-poor, emissions-reduction policies can drastically limit long-term ones.

Nutrition-sensitive agriculture
Nutrition-sensitive agriculture

Author: Ruel, Marie T.

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2017-10-27

Total Pages: 80

ISBN-13:

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A growing number of governments, donor agencies, and development organizations are committed to supporting nutrition-sensitive agriculture (NSA) to achieve their development goals. Although consensus exists on pathways through which agriculture may influence nutrition-related outcomes, empirical evidence on agriculture’s contribution to nutrition and how it can be enhanced is still weak. This paper reviews recent empirical evidence (since 2014), including findings from impact evaluations of a variety of NSA programs using experimental designs as well as observational studies that document linkages between agriculture, women’s empowerment, and nutrition. It summarizes existing knowledge regarding not only impacts but also pathways, mechanisms, and contextual factors that affect where and how agriculture may improve nutrition outcomes. The paper concludes with reflections on implications for agricultural programs, policies, and investments, and highlights future research priorities.

Unbreakable
Unbreakable

Author: Stephane Hallegatte

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2016-11-24

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 1464810044

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'Economic losses from natural disasters totaled $92 billion in 2015.' Such statements, all too commonplace, assess the severity of disasters by no other measure than the damage inflicted on buildings, infrastructure, and agricultural production. But $1 in losses does not mean the same thing to a rich person that it does to a poor person; the gravity of a $92 billion loss depends on who experiences it. By focusing on aggregate losses—the traditional approach to disaster risk—we restrict our consideration to how disasters affect those wealthy enough to have assets to lose in the first place, and largely ignore the plight of poor people. This report moves beyond asset and production losses and shifts its attention to how natural disasters affect people’s well-being. Disasters are far greater threats to well-being than traditional estimates suggest. This approach provides a more nuanced view of natural disasters than usual reporting, and a perspective that takes fuller account of poor people’s vulnerabilities. Poor people suffer only a fraction of economic losses caused by disasters, but they bear the brunt of their consequences. Understanding the disproportionate vulnerability of poor people also makes the case for setting new intervention priorities to lessen the impact of natural disasters on the world’s poor, such as expanding financial inclusion, disaster risk and health insurance, social protection and adaptive safety nets, contingent finance and reserve funds, and universal access to early warning systems. Efforts to reduce disaster risk and poverty go hand in hand. Because disasters impoverish so many, disaster risk management is inseparable from poverty reduction policy, and vice versa. As climate change magnifies natural hazards, and because protection infrastructure alone cannot eliminate risk, a more resilient population has never been more critical to breaking the cycle of disaster-induced poverty.

Improving Child Nutrition
Improving Child Nutrition

Author:

Publisher: UN

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789280646863

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"UNICEF's 2009 report Tracking Progress on Child and Maternal Nutrition drew attention to the impact of high levels of undernutrition on child survival, growth and development and their social and economic toll on nations. It described the state of nutrition programmes worldwide and argued for improving and expanding delivery of key nutrition interventions during the critical 1,000-day window covering a woman's pregnancy and the first two years of her child's life, when rapid physical and mental development occurs. This report builds on those earlier findings by highlighting new developments and demonstrating that efforts to scale up nutrition programmes are working, benefiting children in many countries."--Page 1.