Risk Wise

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complemented with programmes to reduce vulnerability, so as to

make appreciable differences to poor people’s lives in the shorter term.

In Zambia, the longer-term advocacy programme to strengthen the

capacity of the health services to deliver anti-retroviral to those who

are HIV positive is complemented by subsidising the cost of diesel

mills in villages – a measure which reduces the increased workload

on women resulting from the reduction of available labour in the

community because of sickness, death and nursing responsibilities.

Risk analysis, by its nature, is not restricted to one programme

sector, and therefore helps draw together the most important issues

for a community, facilitating the easier integration of programme

sectors, cross cutting issues and potential areas for advocacy at the

outset of programme identification and design. It informs geograph-

ical and sectoral programme choices, considers the affects of poverty

as well as the root causes, identifies trends, contributes to the antic-

ipation of future risk, and helps prioritize programme choices by

grouping and ranking hazards into a hierarchy. It helps suggest how

best to protect our programmes from these hazards, so as to ensure

their greater sustainability.

A preliminary risk analysis in the central highlands of Angola illus-

trated a number of these points. The Concern programme was

intending to focus on an agricultural diversity programme, education,

HIV/Aids awareness, and support to the government’s decentraliza-

tion process. However, risk analysis identified malaria as a principal

hazard as it not only threatened the health of the poor, but could

also have undermined the sustainability of the proposed programme

activities. The peak malaria season coincided with the peak agricul-

tural labour requirements (in an area that had lost most of the

draught animals and was thus highly dependent on human labour)

and would result in lower programme participation rates. The

schools programme would be jeopardized because the

incidence of malaria would lead to poor attendance, as

children would either have been sick or needed to

provide substitute labour for sick adults, and the cost of

medical care would mean the diversion of limited money

resources from school expenses. In response, Concern

determined that helping communities to address malaria

– through expanding the roles of existing partners or

encouraging specialist malaria focused organizations to

work in the area – would have to be an essential

complementary activity to the programmes already iden-

tified.

Our mandate directs us to work in a group of

extremely poor countries, many of which are regressing

economically, almost all of which are threatened by

recurrent hazards, and all of which have large – and in

many cases increasing – numbers of people living in

absolute poverty.

Given the predictable nature of hazards in almost all

of our target countries, and their impact on the poorest

people living in them, the key issue for us is to trans-

late this appreciation of the centrality of risk

management into good, documented practice. To pursue

this we have identified seven countries in Africa, Asia

and the Caribbean where, over the next three years, we

will focus on geographical areas where the risk manage-

ment approach – using risk analysis as a primary driver

of programme design – is adopted. It is intended to

document and disseminate lessons learnt and examples

of good practice from this initiative.

Lautem, East Timor. Locals maintain their livelihoods by protecting irrigation canals

Image: Peter Crichton