“While the Human Development Report brings attention to the important concepts of vulnerability and resilience and to some extent explores why people are more or less resilient it fails to go beyond broad strategies to reducing vulnerability. As Duncan Green in his blog From Poverty to Power points out the report is evasive in addressing how to bring about real change, alter power structures to cater for marginalised groups and transform political systems to be more responsive, supportive and protective. Perhaps such specificity is beyond the scope of the UN system and so the main questions this report raises are whose responsibility it is to develop strategies to build global, national, local and individual resilience, what are the best approaches to reduce vulnerability and how can they be implemented?”
At Agriculture for Impact we talk a lot about resilience and in particular how farms and rural economies can become more resilient to shocks and stresses like climate change, pests and diseases and food price fluctuations. In the new UNDP Human Development Report 2014 released recently, the concept of resilience in terms of individuals, communities and of global political systems is explored. As the report states, “resilience is about ensuring that state, community and global institutions work to empower and protect people”.
In particular the report highlights the precariousness with which we view advances in human development, improvements in peoples’ welfare and the state of the environment and global governance. Corruption, environmental and humanitarian crises, crime, changing leadership, negligence of key sectors such as health and civil unrest can all spell disaster for progress made in tackling poverty, malnutrition, food insecurity, environmental degradation and poor health. As the report states…
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Dr. Bukar Ali USMAN, mni 