Real Risk

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S THE MAIN

United Nations organization responsible for

food and agriculture, the Food and Agriculture Organization

(FAO) works with member countries to promote sustain-

able agricultural production and trade, reduce hunger, and fight

against the causes of food insecurity. For the longer term, this

requires expert technical and policy analysis and advice, and

support to investment in such areas as production, transport and

storage infrastructure. In the shorter term, some of the FAO’s crit-

ical work includes monitoring of food security trends throughout

the world, and providing early warning of impending crises.

In terms of food security monitoring, countries with an

already high level of hunger understandably receive the moni-

toring priority: widespread malnutrition stems from structural

causes not amenable to change in the short term, and it often

takes a relatively small additional shock to make a bad situa-

tion worse. In other words, widespread malnutrition pertains

in some countries because of structural factors such as poverty

and lack of access to public services like education and public

health; the same factors contribute to vulnerability to food inse-

curity.

By monitoring the current state of environmental, economic

and social trends in already ‘fragile’ or vulnerable countries, the

FAO keeps track of the general food security status and short-

term prospects of various countries. A map and list of ‘countries

in crisis requiring external assistance’ is updated at least once a

month by the organization’s Global Information and Early

Warning Service (GIEWS).

A quick comparison between the structural hunger map and

the shorter-term map of countries currently in crisis shows a high

degree of correlation, especially for sub-Saharan Africa, where

food crises tend to be longer lasting. But risk analysis and early

warning must also consider the following possibilities:

• Slow onset natural disasters for a new set of countries

• Human-induced crises at national or sub-national level

• Quick onset disasters (with limited scope for early warning,

but some for preparedness).

Slow onset natural disasters typically lead to food insecurity as

a result of significant crop failure, due to drought or other forms

of adverse weather, or devastation by pests such as desert

locusts. Sub-Saharan Africa being the large part of the world

relying least on irrigation for agriculture, the pertinent long-

term risk map for food production takes on a different focus

according to the major rainy seasons. For example, from June

through October the Sahel is monitored most closely, followed

by east Africa and the Horn until the end of the year, with

Southern African weather and agricultural conditions receiving

much more attention from December through April.

Human-induced food crises brought about by conflict and wide-

spread insecurity, or even long periods of economic

mismanagement and poor governance are, unfortunately, not

uncommon. Indeed, such human-induced rather than disaster-

related food crises have become increasingly common. Since the

early 1990s, the proportion of emergencies that can be attributed

mainly to human causes has more than doubled, rising from

around 15 per cent to over 35 per cent. For such cases, the task

of hazard mapping is more complex, especially where natural and

human-induced factors reinforce each other.

Quick onset disasters such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions

and even large floods offer limited scope for early warning, but in

historically high-risk areas there is some opportunity for

preparedness and mitigation. That is the case in richer countries,

but much less so in developing nations. However, since the major

tsunami of December 2004, all have come to agree that early

warning and disaster preparedness should be an integral part of

the development (and official development assistance) process.

The use of risk mapping and vulnerability analysis is not limited

to the more affluent countries. The stakes are actually higher for

poorer nations, since disasters can set them relatively further back

on the path of development. After a series of devastating droughts,

for example, countries of the Sahel

have integrated the unpre-

dictability of rain-fed food production into their policies, farming

and pastoral strategies, and their patterns of regional population

movement and trade. As a result, these countries tend to fall into

crisis less often than others located in regions endowed with more

favourable conditions for food production. When crises do occur,

as with the 2004 combination of drought and desert locusts, they

tend to be relatively less severe and significantly shorter.

Ethiopia, a large and very diverse country with a population of

well over 70 million, has also been suffering from recurring periods

of drought and food insecurity. The country has established a highly

decentralized and wide-ranging system for disaster preparedness

and prevention and, with donor support, a social safety net to

address chronic vulnerability to food insecurity. It is also imple-

menting, in partnership with the World Food Programme, a

prototype weather-indexed insurance scheme to safeguard basic

household-level productive assets in case of disaster. Ethiopia is

building up its capacity to do timely vulnerability analysis mapping,

or what may be considered dynamic risk mapping. A nationwide

population census will start shortly, agricultural statistics methods

and processes are being upgraded, and are about to be comple-

mented with state-of-the-art satellite data and imagery. These will

enable better estimates of the timing of agricultural activities in

various parts of the country, and of the extent of cultivation.

Long-term, or structural risk mapping has been in practice for

a long time; it basically consists of identifying the areas which

Dynamic hazard mapping for food security:

examples from sub-Saharan Africa

Henri Josserand, UN Food and Agriculture Organization