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| Photo credit: Daniel McGahey. |
On 30 July, IFAD staff at HQ and further afield were treated to a thought-provoking presentation and follow-up interaction with Lucia Scodanibbio, former ASSAR project coordinator, as part of ECG's Change Lecture series.
The objective of the event was to introduce participants to the Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions (ASSAR) project, an extensive five year (2014-2018) undertaking that involved 17 institutional partners, 272 project staff and spanned seven countries. Funded by DFID and IDRC, ASSAR's overarching objective was to gain a better understanding of the barriers and enablers to effective adaptation to climate change in semi-arid regions. More specifically, ASSAR sought to shed light on the ways in which vulnerability differs between individuals, households and communities, as well as to establish how this heterogeneity influences coping and adaptation strategies. The research was underpinned by the fact that it is only through understanding the dynamics of vulnerability and consequently the adaptive capacity of households that the challenges and prospects for the management of climate impacts can be properly analysed and translated into adaptation practice and policy.
In order to identify the determinants of vulnerability, project staff employed an innovative research approach known as Research-into-Use (RiU). Stakeholder participation, a constant throughout the process, formed the cornerstone of RiU, along with capacity building and strategic partnerships. Stakeholders at different levels of adaptation practice and policy were targeted, ranging from local communities to national institutions. In order to build a comprehensive understanding of adaptation needs and past failings, multi-stakeholder participatory processes including vulnerability and risk assessments, transformative scenario planning and participatory scenario analysis were utilised. At the community level, the research approach included a mix of surveys and qualitative methods including focus groups and interviews.
Intriguingly, while the research found that factors such as gender, age, marital status and ethnicity influence how people experience and respond to risk, the research threw up some interesting cases that debunk a number of assumptions related to vulnerability. It is generally accepted that gender influences access to education, income and other services that largely determine one's ability to cope with shocks. Therefore, in development discourse women are often labelled as victims of climate change, with discriminatory social norms limiting their ability to implement appropriate adaptation strategies. However, specific situations are quite often not so clear cut, and research conducted as part of ASSAR undermines the validity of this commonly-held assumption.
For example, in East and West Africa, due to widespread unemployment, men may be unable to provide their wives with the necessary capital to set up small enterprises. As this is a marital expectation in these regions, women may become resentful and initiate separation. Therefore, we must not automatically presume that women are the most vulnerable group, rather it may be the young men in desperate search of employment, the young women struggling to establish their small enterprises, or wives in polygamous households with little say in decision making. Women often resent both male control and their inability to provide adequately. With their growing contributions to household production, they have enhanced expectations of reciprocity in their relationships. In Namibia and Kenya, widows and female heads of household are better able to control the income they have earned as a result of diversifying their incomes. In addition, men as well as women often engage in risky livelihoods out of desperation, negatively impacting their mental health and sometimes involving them in violent conflict.
The revelations made by ASSAR should be taken into account by all development practitioners and organisations. This is particularly true for IFAD, an organisation that prides itself on its niche of targeting the poorest and most vulnerable rural dwellers. While IFAD ensures that its interventions are aligned with country priorities through country strategic opportunities programmes COSOPs, it also strives to identify and safeguard against a wide range of social and environmental risks through the Social, Environmental and Climate Assessment Procedures (SECAP). Beneficiaries are identified through IFAD's Targeting Guidelines, currently under review. IFAD can learn much about what constitutes vulnerability from the research conducted as part of ASSAR. Furthermore, vulnerability is very context specific . Moving forward, those conducting vulnerability assessments would do well to consider that women are not always powerless and that men are in some cases equally or even more exposed to risks associated with climate change. When gauging the nutritional profiles of households, the innovative research methods employed in the project could be applied to IFAD operations to gain deeper insights into household dynamics.
Find out more: Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions (ASSAR) project
IFAD's Targeting Policy