Course - Vulnerability

Lesson 2 - Vulnerability Assessment

Food Security Information for Action
Vulnerability
Lesson 2
Vulnerability Assessment
Learner’s Notes



Course - Vulnerability

Lesson 2 - Vulnerability Assessment

Table of Contents

Learning objectives

Introduction

The vulnerability framework

Levels of assessment

Vulnerable groups

Uses of vulnerability assessment

Risk management terms

Selecting the right method

Summary

If you want to know more

Annex 1: Table comparing various tools for vulnerability assessment

Course - Vulnerability

Lesson 2 - Vulnerability Assessment

Learning objectives

At the end of this lesson you will be able to:

•define the purpose and scope of vulnerability assessment;

•understand how vulnerability assessment relates to early warning monitoring activities, food security response planning and national policy and programme development;; and

•identify the criteria to select among the tools available for conducting vulnerability assessments.

Introduction

This lesson explains how the concept of vulnerability is applied in practice to conducting Vulnerability Assessments and how the assessment results can be useful in decision making.

The main areas of vulnerability assessment and analysis that have been developed from the vulnerability framework are identified and discussed.

A central concern of this lesson is linking assessment results to action. The various ways in which vulnerability assessment results are used to reduce food insecurity are discussed.

Finally, a typology of the major food security related vulnerability assessment approaches and methods is presented along with criteria to select the most appropriate method in a specific context.

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Vulnerability Assessment (VA) is an important component of food security analysis. VA is distinguished from other aspects of food security analysis by its emphasis onthe constantly changing conditions faced by households, and of their responses to those conditions.

Because of this dynamic perspective, the analysis can be used to support both:

  • efforts to address the short term constraints to food access; and
  • reduction of longer-term threats to food security and well-being.

Vulnerability analysis is not a single or standard measurement system. Instead, vulnerability analysis brings together different data sets to investigate causes of food insecurity and predict changes over time.

The vulnerability framework

Vulnerability assessment methods share a common conceptual framework.

The analysis may begin with an assessment of the chronic or current level of Food Security (FS) and then incorporate the elements of risk and coping capacity into an analysis that is more forward-looking and dynamic.

At its most inclusive, vulnerability analysis incorporates a number of sequential steps:

  1. Situational Analysis - What is the current level of food insecurity?
  2. Assessment of risks/hazards - What are the major risks, the intensity and severity? Who is exposed to these risks?
  3. Vulnerability analysis - What is the ability to manage these risks?
  4. Assessment of Risk to food insecurity - Given these factors, what is the prognosis for future food security?
  5. From analysis to action - How can this information and analysis be used to reduce future food insecurity?

There is no single way to undertake a vulnerability assessment. Indeed, the scope of the vulnerability framework makes it extremely difficult to conduct a comprehensive vulnerability analysis within a single assessment process.

Many different methodologies have been applied to the task, each relevant to a particular dimension of the vulnerability problem and a particular question of strategic or operational importance.

Levels of assessment

Vulnerability assessment can be conducted at multiple levels.

Table 1: Levels of vulnerability assessment
Level / Description
Household / The concept of vulnerability is most frequently used to understand the relationship of risk and coping at the household level.
This is a basic unit of social organization where resources are shared. Findings of similar households can be aggregated to efficiently characterize population groups (households with similar livelihood strategies, female headed households …) and to develop recommendations for them.
However, depending on the purpose of the assessment, it may be appropriate to investigate, analyse or report on vulnerability at different levels of social organization.
Individual / At the lowest level vulnerability is a characteristic of an individual.
There are important intra-household differences in vulnerability. For example, depending on the local social customs and norms, a shortage of food at the household level may impact the children, women and men very differently.
Understanding these differences can be critical to planning and implementing interventions.
Community / It may also be appropriate to assess vulnerability at the community level.
Collecting vulnerability information at the community level, usually through participatory techniques, is typically cheaper than household level surveys. Furthermore, understanding the dynamics of inter-household relationships can be critical for understanding vulnerability.
Community participation in the analysis links well to community level action to address shocks affecting households or individuals.
Within a livelihood zone / Often vulnerability is collected and analysed within livelihood or agro-ecological zones.
In regions where livelihood options are limited, which includes many rural areas, it is possible to define geographical zones within which livelihood activities, risks and risk management strategies are relatively homogenous.
Collecting and analysing information at this level allows relatively large areas to be efficiently characterized and recommendations developed for these zones.
Administrative zone / There is often a demand for information, analysis and recommendations at various administrative levels, such as the district or regional level.
This level of analysis recognizes that many solutions to reduce vulnerability, especially related to shocks which affect many (co-variant), fall outside of the household. For example, the social services provided by government can be critical.
Key decision makers are often located within these administrative units, and require analysis targeted to their jurisdiction.
National or global level / A vulnerability analysis can be undertaken at the national or even global level.
This information may be useful in helping to identify areas of high vulnerability and target national or global resources to address this problem.
It can also assess the implication of national or international policy level choices on vulnerability.

The methods used for data collection and analysis will be adapted according to the level of assessment used.

There is also a considerable amount of interaction between the different methods.

Example
For example, The results of several community level assessments may be aggregated to develop a district level vulnerability assessment.

Vulnerability assessment for food security is an emerging profession.

There is still a heavy reliance on simple narrative analyses and more formal, quantitative methods are only beginning to emerge.

Vulnerable groups

A common feature of many vulnerability assessments is the identification of vulnerable groups.

Although the ultimate goal of food security interventions is to enhance the welfare of individuals, analysing the complex set of information pertaining to each person would be impossible. Therefore people are clustered into groups of individuals with shared characteristics.

Often, such common characteristics are either of demographic nature (e.g. age, gender), location specific (e.g. people in high altitude mountains) or occupation specific (e.g. fisher folk or urban labourers).

Such vulnerability profiles indicate:

  • Who and how many people are vulnerable (which is important for making resource allocation decisions);
  • Where they are (which improves geographic targeting); and
  • Why they are vulnerable (which allows us to understand what type of interventions are required).

The nature and extent of vulnerability varies amongst social groups, between and within different livelihoods and between rural and urban areas.

Understanding these variations plays a key role in identifying interventions and targeting those that are most vulnerable and excluding the less vulnerable.

Particular groups may be vulnerable for quite different reasons, and therefore the type of support that is appropriate for them may also differ.

Examples of vulnerable groups
Some examples of groups that are routinely identified as particularly vulnerable are:
  • children under the age of five (vulnerable especially to undernutrition, malnutrition and infectious diseases);
  • lactating mothers (vulnerable to undernutrition in the context of nursing babies);
  • the elderly (vulnerable due to loss of assets, or ability to use their assets productively, or additional burdens of care for the ill and orphans due to HIV/AIDS);
  • female headed households, including widows and divorced women (vulnerable due to loss of access rights to land, lack of time to cultivate land, and loss of previous partner’s contribution to household livelihood);
  • people with disabilities (lack of access to production or earning opportunities; social exclusion);
  • families with members with HIV/AIDS or other chronic illnesses (vulnerable due to lack of labour, and disposal of assets to cover medical costs);
  • Occupational groups with low/variable income, such as fisher folk, agricultural labourers and marginal farmers (vulnerable because of weather dependency, highly variable income, and limited income diversification);and
  • remote rural populations (vulnerable due to over reliance on a single livelihood source, lack of diversification options, high transport costs, poor information).

Factors leading to vulnerability
The factors leading to vulnerability differ across the different groups.
Common characteristics used to cluster vulnerable groups include:
  • demographic characteristics;
  • geographical location;
  • position in society; and
  • sources of livelihoods or main income.
Gender plays a significant part in these different vulnerabilities – women are often more vulnerable than men.
For example in southern Africa the prevalence of the HIV infection among women is 20% higher than for men.

Think of the possible limitations of using “vulnerable groups” as a basis for targeting interventions....

Example

It can happen that not all members of the defined vulnerable group are equally vulnerable. (e.g. some women-headed households have far greater assets than the poorer male-headed households...).

Furthermore, it could happen that the criteria used to determine inclusion in a programme exclude many of the newly vulnerable (e.g. the farm workers who have lost their jobs do not qualify for assistance).

While the use of vulnerable groups can help in targeting limited resources, the use of standard criteria without a careful analysis of the relevance to the local context may be counter-productive. Vulnerability can be thought of as a continuum with some people being more vulnerable than others, even within the same group.

Uses of vulnerability assessment

An understanding of vulnerability can be helpful in analysing food security problems and formulating advice and recommendations in a range of different contexts. Whilst three distinct contexts are presented below, a VA often can serve several purposes.

Let’s look at the main situations where vulnerability assessment can be usefully applied:

  1. Early Warning System
  2. Emergency Programming
  3. Risk and vulnerability reduction

1. The Early Warning System

A primary purpose of an Early Warning System (EWS) is to monitor the incidence of shocks or hazards in order to give timely warning to decisions makers. This information may be used to trigger appropriate response plans.

Potentially there are a large number of shocks that could negatively affect food security in a given country. However, establishing a EWS to monitor the incidence of all of these shocks would be expensive and probably unnecessary.

Shocks that could negatively affect food security
Potentially there are a large number of shocks and trends that could negatively affect food security in a given country. Amongst the co-variant shocks affecting many people simultaneously are :
  • drought;
  • floods;
  • storms;
  • disease and pest outbreaks;
  • volcanoes;
  • earthquakes;
  • tsunamis;
  • landslides;
  • war;
  • increases in food prices or inflation; and
  • macro-economic crisis, e.g. sudden devaluations.

A risk and vulnerability assessment can provide an estimation of the most important shocks and hazards for a location or population group.

This would include:

  • an analysis of the frequency and characteristics of these phenomena;
  • how many people are exposed to these risks; and
  • how susceptible people are and their ability to manage these without external assistance.

Taken together, this information will help a EWS manager to prioritize which hazards and shocks to monitor in a specific area.

Case study: Linking vulnerability analysis to early warning – Djibouti
In this case the baseline vulnerability analysis provided essential context information for designing an appropriate EWS.
Food security is often closely linked with agricultural production outcomes. Hence, a chronic or temporary production deficit against local food requirements immediately translates into chronic or temporary food insecurity. Consequently most early warning and food security monitoring systems draw heavily from two information sources: (1) crop and/or livestock production data; and (2) market price information.
Prior to establishing an early warning system in Djibouti, FEWS NET, with assistance from the Government of Djibouti, undertook a national baseline food economy study. This study profiled the major characteristics of different food economy zones. It included elements of vulnerability analysis; identifying the major hazards and the relative capacity of different types of households to withstand them.
The study pointed out that:
  • The vast majority of the population lives in DjiboutiCity and depends on non-agricultural formal, or informal, employment. Casual employment in the construction sector is critical for the poorest groups.
  • Persistent drought, conflict and a desire to access health and education services has led to a major decline in nomadic pastoralism.
  • There is an increasing dependence of the rural population on the urban economy, with assistance flowing from the city to rural areas in the form of regular remittances of money and/or food.
  • The country produces minimal amounts of food and is almost entirely dependent on food imports.
Therefore in the case of Djibouti it was decided thatmonitoring domestic agricultural production and wholesale prices was of limited relevance. Instead the key variables included in the EWS were urban employment statistics (formal and informal), the cost of a food basket in the urban market and factors influencing the food trade.

2. Emergency Programming

Vulnerability analysis can also be applied in helping to prepare an emergency response to a specific shock.

Example: Emergency response to a specific shock
If a region experiences a prolonged lack of rainfall, the food consumption of the affected population may not decline immediately.
However, if the shock is severe enough in terms of duration, intensity or coverage, then the food security situation may well deteriorate in the period before the next harvest.

A vulnerability analysis can be conducted to analyze the short-term food security consequences for a given shock. In this case the emphasis is on predicting the food security outcome.

A vulnerability assessment can provide the context to predict the impact of shocks and hazards, and forecast the probable food security impacts. It can give an indication of how close to the edge people are before the shock and the extent of their ability to cope with the effects. Depending on the VA method employed this may produce recommendations that:
  • target assistance to the most severely affected regions and socio-economic populations; and
  • calculate the actual quantity of assistance (food, cash or other transfers) required.

In the context of emergency programming, VA is closely related to strengthening ex-post coping mechanisms.

Case study: Vulnerability Assessment in Nepal
Following a failure of the winter rains of 2005/06 in the far-west and mid-west regions of Nepal, a preliminary assessment indicated a failure of the rain-fed winter wheat crop.
Consequently the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) organized a vulnerability assessment in order to:
  • verify and validate information on current food availability, market conditions and the extent and scale of crop damage;
  • identify affected villages and populations;
  • recommend an appropriate response strategy for addressing the impact of the drought.
The assessment collected data on:
  • agricultural production;
  • food self-sufficiency;
  • crop losses;
  • the food gap;
  • food availability on markets; and
  • coping mechanisms.
This information was used to analyse the probable food security status of the population later in the year.
Based on this analysis, the recommendations included the immediate provision of emergency food assistance and an expansion of food for work programmes. In the medium term, seed distribution and micro-irrigation projects were also recommended.
Predicting the consequences of potential shocks
A similar analysis may be conducted to predict the likely consequences of potential shocks, rather than actual shocks.
In this case it would be termed scenario planning and in particular used to develop contingency plans.

3. Risk and vulnerability reduction

A further application of vulnerability analysis is in guiding the design of interventions to reduce people’s long-term vulnerability.

If we can reduce people’s exposure to risk or reduce their sensitivity to shocks and/or strengthen their ability to manage risks, then the incidence and severity of future food crises can be reduced.

In this context the emphasis is on analysing the causal factors underlying vulnerability to food insecurity.
The focus here is on present livelihood characteristics, risks and interventions.
This analysis primarily supports recommendations for medium and longer-term interventions to strengthen ex-ante risk management, in both development and emergency programming.
VA can produce recommendations to minimize vulnerabilities by avoiding (prevention) or limiting (mitigation and preparedness) the adverse impacts of shocks.

This analysis can be used to formulate, fine tune or review either programme or project level activities or strategies and policies.

Case study: Vulnerability Assessment in Sahel
In 2005, there was a food crisis in the Sahel that highlighted the extent of the region’s vulnerability. This increased international attention to the region and led to large sums of money being provided to help those people survive the immediate crisis. However, several agencies shared a concern that too much attention had been paid to the quite specific situation and too little to the unacceptable and growing levels of vulnerability that pre-dated the crisis and persisted afterwards.
Consequently the Sahel Working Group (an inter-agency group) conducted a study to analyse how vulnerability is understood and addressed by development agencies and government departments in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. The areas of investigation included a theoretical examination of the way that vulnerability is understood, an analysis of the root causes of vulnerability in the Sahel and an analysis of the impact of past aid programmes on vulnerability. The methods used were primarily interviews and a review of other studies.
The conclusions and recommendations were broad and long-term, with an emphasis on finding ways of reversing the increasing vulnerability in the region. Specifically the assessment called for:
  • a commitment to significant and sustained increases in funding for long-term development, with less short-term emergency interventions;
  • support to maintain the mobility of pastoralists;
  • measures to reduce the impact of drought and improve the ability to manage the impact of drought as part of development plans;
  • greater decentralization to improve accountability and representation of local interests in decision-making.

Risk management terms

The following are definitions of risk management terms: