Why building ‘resilience’ matters, and needs to confront injustice and inequality

Debbie Hillier, Oxfam’s Humanitarian Policy Adviser (right), introduces ‘No Accident’, Oxfam’s new paper on resilience and inequality

Asking 50 Oxfam staff what they think of resilience will get 50 different responses. These will range all the way from the Sceptics (“just the latest buzzword, keep your head down and it’ll go away”), to the Deniers (“really nothing to do with me”) to the Pioneers (“it’s obvious, we’ve been doing this for years”).  But probably the biggest category would be the Unsure Interested – “well, I suspect it’s pretty important, but I’m really not clear what it means for me.”

Answering that last point is key, and at a recent Oxfam get together, a humanitarian colleague gave a wonderful example.  He spoke about a tropical storm which had devastated a rural area of Honduras; Oxfam humanitarian staff had responded quickly and effectively with water and sanitation, cash-for-work, and essential household items to help people get back on their feet. But when he visited the area, and talked to the community, he found that the problem was less about flooding, and more about agribusiness.

Local communities had been displaced by massive sugar and melon plantations, denuding the land of trees, diverting water sources and thus altering the local hydrology.  The companies had employed cheaper Guatemalan labourers from over the border, so people no longer had either land to farm or paid labour, leaving them without livelihoods and impoverished.

All the tropical storm did was to expose the deepening vulnerability of the community.  So while Oxfam’s humanitarian response helped the community to cope with the flood, it would leave them in no better position for when the next inevitable storm/flood came.

People in a waterside house raised on stilts in a slum in Manila. © Robin Hammond / Panos

A programme with ‘resilience’ as the desired outcome would look at the underlying factors for people’s vulnerability.  Critically, it would look at power dynamics and inequality (the latter extremely high in Honduras: for index geeks, a Gini coefficient of 55).  These are too often left out of the resilience debate, which so far has focused more on technical measures.  Yet Oxfam’s new report, No Accident, shows that countries with higher income inequality have populations which are more vulnerable to climate change, natural hazards and conflict.

The link between inequality and vulnerability is no doubt complex and defies simple correlation or causation.  But using language like ‘risk being dumped on the poor’ opens up a new way of looking at vulnerability.  At the international level it’s easy to see – rich countries reap the economic rewards of pumping carbon into the atmosphere, but poor countries bear the highest burden.  So whilst the impact of climate change by 2100 is estimated to cause GDP losses of 12-23% in poor countries, in the richest countries, the impact will be a range of 0.1% loss to a benefit of 0.9% of GDP.

Biofuel production and excessive speculation on food commodities is another way of exporting risk.  Food price spikes cause misery and hunger for poor people yet agribusiness firm Cargill’s profits surged during the global food crisis of 2007-8 and the US drought of 2012.

And at national level, big business and local elites can manipulate markets and governments to privatise the profits and socialise the risks. Clearly big business is not always bad but it can be.  In Peru, water supplies are dwindling as glaciers melt, but much is siphoned off or contaminated by mining companies, leaving local communities short of clean water.

The current response – at national and international level – is not good enough.  Climate change is picking up speed, food and commodity markets are more volatile than ever, environmental degradation is increasing, and more and more people are exposed to risk – either through population growth or migration. Whilst global poverty is declining, inequality is not.

States have the legal and political responsibility to reduce the risks faced by poor people, and ensure that they are borne more evenly across society.And note that equality is NOT about everyone having the same resources and support.  Disadvantaged people require more services and support simply to give them equal life chances (see pic, right).

Clearly targeted support, plus social protection, health, education – which one might call key building blocks of resilience – cost money.  Brazil is bringing down its (still high) inequality through concerted efforts by the government, including major increases in the minimum wage, and social protection schemes including a universal pension and the Bolsa Familia.  This is possible in part because there’s enough money – the tax-to-GDP ratio is approaching 35% in Brazil, compared to only 9-10% for Bangladesh and Pakistan.  Increasing tax revenues through progressive taxation has a key role to play in redistributing risk.

In terms of the aid sector – at the risk of oversimplifying, humanitarians are good at risk, and development experts are good at power.  But what we need is both.  Development thinking has often been blind to the shocks, changes and uncertainties that poor people face, and naïve in assuming that development takes place in largely stable environments.  Long term programmes need to internalise shocks and hazards (instead of sticking them in the risks/assumptions column of a logframe and then ignoring them) and then scale up and down as appropriate.

The newly fashionable focus on resilience can help communities not only to cope but to thrive despite the shocks and stresses, but only if the current resilience dialogue and practice is broadened out to tackle inequality, redistribute risk and stop risk dumping.

And here’s Debbie doing the increasingly obligatory video exec sum for wasters 3m piece to camera

What do we know about the impact of savings groups on poor African women?

Savings for Change (SfC) is one of Oxfam America’s flagship programmes, reaching 680,000 members, mostly women, in 13 countries. Here Sophie Romana, Oxfam America’s Deputy Director of Community Finance, reports on some findings from an innovative qualitative and quantitative survey of the groups in Mali, published today (click through to summary or full report).

How do you save money and borrow when you live in rural sub-Saharan Africa?  Millions of women do just that every week, through their Savings Group.  Formed and monitored by teams of field agents from local organizations, 20 to 25 women gather every week at the same time and place to put a few cents in a wooden “savings box”. Once there is enough money in the box – i.e. the saving fund – members who need a small, short-term loan come in front of the self-managed group to explain the purpose of the loan (food purchases, life’s emergencies or working capital for an income generating activity).  The loans are paid back to the group with interest, which provides them with a return.  In a nutshell, savings groups provide basic financial services to poor rural women underserved or ignored by commercial banks and microfinance institutions.

But does belonging to a group actually improve the lives of members, their families, and their villages? To answer this, Oxfam America and Freedom from Hunger commissioned Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) and the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology (BARA) at the University of Arizona to conduct a unique piece of joint research on Saving for Change groups in Mali: a randomized controlled trial (RCT) combined with a qualitative longitudinal study, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  The RCT included 500 villages: in 210 of them we introduced SFC, the other 290 were “controlled” (intentionally left out of the intervention) to try and measure the difference, hence the impacts. The qualitative survey focused on 19 villages included in the RCT and interviewed members, husbands, women non-members, villagers etc… This mixed-methods approach combines the benefits of ‘quant’ and ‘qual’ to try and get under the skin of the impacts of savings groups.

The findings of the three-year study (see chart) show encouraging results in terms of increased saving (up 31%) and lending (12% more women took a loan from a savings group), increased food security, and an increased investment in livestock (households in SfC villages own on average $120 more in livestock, which buys you four goats, three ewes or one calf).  The findings also demonstrate that savings groups reach the poorest of the poor with 82% of households in study villages living on less than $1.25 a day.

The results from the RCT also show that there was almost no change in income and health and education expenses. We hope that these results will come with longer study, but we are not sure.

Social capital, one of the outcomes most valued by group members, is proving to be a puzzle. The group offers a safe space for women to share family problems and seek advice from each other. Outside the meeting, women have also reported over the years that they tend to greet each other more in the village, and engage with each other more often than before they joined.  But here’s our evidence puzzle: this is what the anthropological findings support, but they were not captured at all by the quantitative-RCT.

Take up rate: how do groups get created in zones where we don’t run the program?

Based on feedback from our partners and staff, Oxfam started to train “volunteer replicators” members who themselves train new groups. They have been responsible for SfC “going viral” In treatment zones the take up rate is 40.5% of women – by comparison in other similar approaches such as microcredit, the take up rate is 15% to 22.5%.

But the replicators have unexpectedly ‘spilled over’ into control villages, far away from a treatment village. This may mess up the control zones by “contaminating” the sample for the RCT, but it’s potentially good news for the women in those villages, and a testament to the attraction of savings schemes like SfC.

Depending on how strict a definition of a Saving for Change group we used (other traditional groups resemble SfC groups), we see a take up rate in control zones varying from 6% to 12% of women.  So how did that happen?  Did a conversation in the market lead to the replicator offering to go and create a new group there?  Did a member get married, move to another village and start a group there? Did a woman decide to help her daughter in another village to set up a group? Traveling to another village to form a group is challenging for many Malian women, yet SfC groups were created with no encouragement or promotion from the project, no visits from paid field agents.

We also found that women who are more socially integrated and already have an income generating activity are more likely to join earlier, but that more marginalized women do indeed join later on. When women want to save money together, they find a way to make it happen.

Are members of SFC more resilient?

Whatever your own personal definition of resilience may be, in the Sahel any sign of resilience is a success. The study took place in the Segou region of Mali, where 40% of the households experienced a ‘shock’ last year (food price increase, drought, or illness) and 40% are food insecure (unable to produce or buy nutritious food). Households in SfC villages experienced an 8% increase in reported food security and were also eating more during the hungry season – spending 39¢ more per adult per week on food during this difficult time of year and eliminating the seasonal dip. In Mali 39¢ buys you a plate of nutritious beans or a few large cassava roots.  We also found that this impact is greatest for one of the most marginalized groups of women, those women married to younger brothers in large households.

From my point of view as a program manager, I see a value in combining an RCT with a qualitative study because I need to know if the program produces the impacts we designed it for and if it does not, what needs to be corrected.  However I do have a lot of questions around the findings, which I regularly debate with my Monitoring, Evaluating and Learning colleagues. That being said, would I run another RCT if a donor asked for (and funded!) one? Why not? Would I look for funding to run another RCT? Not necessarily – there are other less expensive tools to measure program impacts.  But for the time being, I’ll say with the confidence that only statistical evidence can give me: belonging to a savings group does make your life better!

Sophie Romana. with Janina Matuzeski and Clelia Anna Mannino. Today also sees an important Mali donor conference. Oxfam report here.

Learning the Lessons: Why is change NOT happening in the response to hunger crises?

I know I go on all the time about ‘how change happens’, but often in development the important question is ‘why doesn’t change happen?’, and we need to get better at answering it. On Tuesday Oxfam published Learning the Lessons, an analysis of the response to the 2012 Sahel food crisis, which affected some 18m people across 9 countries. It’s a serious piece of work, drawing on interviews with 30 external bodies – donors, governments etc, other published research, focus group discussions with affected communities and perspectives from civil society.

Compared to the ‘too little, too late’ response to previous crises in the region in 2010 and 2005, the report finds some improvements: early warning systems had improved and raised the alarm earlier, and governments in the region reacted in good time – Niger, for example, appealed for support six months earlier than it did during the 2010 crisis.

But there were still problems with governments, donors and the aid system. Governments in the region still lack the financial and technical capacity to really be able to lead. As for donors:

‘There was still disagreement about the likely severity of the crisis. Some donors, such as the European Community’s Humanitarian Office (ECHO), acted earlier than in previous years, but overall, donor funding was no more timely than before. By the beginning of July 2012 and the peak of the crisis, the UN appeal remained just under 50 per cent funded.’

This really matters: 5.6 million people didn’t get the seeds and tools they needed in time to prepare for the 2012 harvest cycle.

Interestingly, the report sees the roadblock as conceptual, and argues that this can be overcome by changing the way we think about such crises to emphasise the concept of ‘resilience’ – very much the current buzzword in a lot of development circles. ‘Learning the Lessons’ reckons a ‘resilience lens’ would allow donors to:

-          Develop a shared understanding of vulnerability to food insecurity so that support is targeted to the poorest and responses can be launched rapidly;

-          Break down barriers between humanitarian and development actors so that long-term and emergency programmes effectively support each other;

-          Invest in strengthening the capacity of national and local actors so that governments can deliver large-scale, sustained support to their citizens.

I must admit I was initially sceptical that the answer to such a profound failure is a new buzzword. But actually, I think the authors may be on to something.

The most useful framework I’ve found for understanding the roots of inertia (aka ‘why change doesn’t happen’) is the ‘3i’ model of ideas, institutions and interests. A combination of these three underlies the kind of paralysis we’ve seen in the Sahel response.

Institutions: there is still a deep division between the ‘humanitarian/emergency’ and ‘long term development’ wings of the aid business. This is reflected in funding structures, which are completely different for the two silos. The polarization makes it hard to take a long-term approach to reducing the vulnerability to the inevitable future crises.

Interests: if you work in an aid agency, there are clear risks to responding early to a crisis – what if the rains come, you are accused of crying wolf etc? In any case, your political pay masters often only start banging the table when the grim TV images start to roll (by which time it is often too late, and certainly much more expensive, to respond). There is also still something of a macho ‘I’m here to save lives, get out of my way’ approach to humanitarian work which can all too easily brush aside national governments and local knowledge that are crucial to understanding the long-term roots of crises, and building institutions to deal with future ones. National governments need to be at the heart of efforts to address food insecurity, but that is likely to threaten the power relations of the status quo,

Ideas: The institutional silos reflect a crippling conceptual dichotomy. Cyclical crises such as those affecting the Sahel really can’t be described as ‘emergencies’, in that they are predictable and regular. But the underlying thinking in the aid business is still ‘is that an emergency, or is it long term development? Do we send in the engineers or the economists?’

One of the things I’ve noticed about climate change is that it is a ‘disruptive idea’. Disruptive ideas can’t be fitted into existing entrenched mental and organizational frameworks, and so often prompt violent rejection, but also the possibility of paradigm shifts. Because climate change doesn’t ‘belong’ to any existing camp, it makes it easier to bring people together (development and environment, for example) to think differently about how we respond to it without prompting accusations of turf wars and interference. Is ‘resilience’ also a disruptive idea, with the potential to bypass the humanitarian/development divide?

I’m sure there is a big literature our there about the characteristics and impact of disruptive ideas. Any links appreciated.

‘Resource Futures’: good new report on how to confront resource scarcity and conflict

Looks like this is going to be crystal ball week on the blog – must be the time of year. Just read Resource Futures from Chatham House (inventors of the ubiquitous Chatham House Rule). The analysis is pretty good, but it really raises the bar on communication, with great interactive infographics and killer facts. Advocacy wonks everywhere, take note.

The paper summarizes the key trends and flashpoints in global resource use, including:

• Resource trade has grown nearly 50% from a decade ago in weight terms owing to expanding trade in oil, iron and steel, coal, oilseeds and cereals
• Large-scale resource extraction remains concentrated in a handful of countries (China, the United States, Australia, the European Union, Brazil, Russia, India and Indonesia)

And then boils it all down into 5 ‘key findings’:

Volatility is the new normal

Volatility (see graph), driven by shrinking ‘buffers’ (eg reserve stockpiles) is spurring resource nationalism and needs to bedampened down by government and international action. The report has some clever ideas on how to design price smoothing mechanisms for oil, food and metals.

Environmental change and degradation are challenging traditional approaches

Environmental boundaries are starting to bite, notably climate change and water scarcity. Not much new in the way of ideas here (remove fossil fuel subsidies, improve water-sharing agreements etc), more ‘just do it’.

Trade as a frontline for resource conflicts

‘Trade is becoming a frontline for conflicts over resources’. Interesting – trade wars on the way back, eg over unilateral export bans by food producers, but in a different guise from the old WTO style struggle over import liberalization

Resource politics matter

‘Resource politics, not environmental preservation or sound economics, are set to dominate the global agenda and are already playing themselves out through trade disputes, climate negotiations, market manipulation strategies, aggressive industrial policies and the scramble to control frontier areas.’

Likely flashpoints that will need international action include resource production in highly eco-sensitive areas like the Arctic and ‘extreme engineering’ such as weather modification. The report picks up Alex Evans’ suggestion for a high profile annual ‘State of the World’s Resources’ report.

Collaborative governance is the only option

The report’s main big idea, in terms of policy proposals, is to set up a ‘new club of the world’s principal resource-producing and -consuming countries to fill existing governance gaps on resource and scarcities governance. This ‘Resources 30’ or R30 grouping, conceived as a ‘coalition of the committed’, would comprise leaders and officials from thirty countries of systemic significance as resource producers, consumers, importers or exporters.’

And here’s report co-author Bernice Lee introducing the findings

Natural Disasters and Humanitarian Crises in 2012: how did we do?

Ed Cairns, an Oxfam senior policy adviser, looks back on a very mixed year in the response to humanitarian crises.

You might not have noticed it from the headlines, but this year Oxfam has responded to more crises than ever before. Not megadisasters like Haiti’s earthquake in 2010, but the daily struggle for survival that has just got worse in places like the West African countries of the Sahel. The dearth of headlines may of course also be because much of the world has been preoccupied with its own problems – the Eurozone in crisis, China slowing down, and the US teetering on its fiscal cliff. Perhaps that is why the UN expects this year’s humanitarian appeals to end 2012 around 63% filled. That’s $3 billion of aid to save lives not given – no worse than last year, but significantly down from the pre-recession days of 2007, ’08 and ’09 when such appeals reached more than 70% of their targets.

This year, one crisis came on top of another – sometimes literally. Like northern Mali’s rebellion in April which has forced some 360,000 from their homes, including 160,000 seeking refuge in Mali’s impoverished neighbours. For – without even mentioning Syria – 2012 has not really been a good year for peace. Last week, the UN launched a review of its peacekeeping in Congo after its mission let rebels force 140.000 people from the city of Goma. According to Tariq Rieb, an Oxfam colleague in Congo, the UN’s performance fell ‘way short of what anyone would expect.’ And this only a month after another UN review slammed the UN role in Sri Lanka, where UN and other aid workers failed to do what they could to protect civilians in 2009.

Too many aid workers still think their responsibility ends with providing material necessities, while in many crises what people ask for, even more, is safety. Twenty years after we searched our souls in Bosnia for sending aid to the ‘well-fed dead’ – who nobody was protecting from murder and rape – we still have a long way to go. Although humanitarian aid has come on by leaps and bounds in quality and professionalism, the dilemmas of working in conflicts are proving more stubborn. While what has come to light in Sri Lanka and Congo should prompt a profound look at why the UN, including peacekeeping, is not better at protecting people from, to quote its founders in 1945, the ‘scourge of war’.

Not everything of course is so bleak. Gaza at least got a ceasefire. And in other humanitarian crises, there is a real sense that governments and organisations on the ground are getting better at coping with disasters. Tragically, this month hundreds were killed by Typhoon Bopha in the southern Philippines, but the local Humanitarian Response Consortium went immediately into action to get safe water to the stricken areas, and launch cash-for-work programmes so that families could buy food, clothing and shelter. The local authorities too were well prepared,

tangible proof of how the Philippines has built its national capacity to handle disasters since 2009.

Just as well actually, because the Philippines, like so much of the world, is likely to see more such weather-related disasters in future. So it was not good that, a few thousand miles away in Doha, the world failed to agree much of anything at the latest talks on climate change. There was no big new commitment to cut emissions, while the earth continues, on its current trends, towards the 2C temperature rise that most scientists warn us about. If those trends continue, we can expect more climate-related disasters, and a lot more humanitarian need. And perhaps most worrying of all, coastal areas, like parts of Bangladesh, going under water – despite the progress that has been done to make them less vulnerable to disaster. In one part of south west Bangladesh, Oxfam is leading a consortium building 11,000 shelters, homes and latrines on plinths above flood levels. But if the world fails to tackle climate change, will that really help? We don’t honestly know. And because of that, this year’s greatest humanitarian disaster was probably in… Doha.

Reducing the risk of disasters; reducing inequality – what’s the link?

Another day, another, errm Day. Ahead of tomorrow’s International Day for Disaster Reduction (hold the front page….), Debbie Hillier, Oxfam’s Humanitarian PolicyAdviser (right), explores the links between DRR and inequality

I have never understood why disaster risk reduction (DRR) gets so little attention – from governments, donors and the aid system in general.  Be honest, how many of you know what the Hyogo Framework for Action is, or know what UNISDR stands for? This is despite the proven effectiveness and – the holy grail - value for money of disaster risk reduction.  Frankly speaking, it’s a no-brainer.

We all seem to understand the imperative for prevention when it comes to vaccinations and insurance, but somehow this falls apart when it comes to reducing the impacts of disasters.  For national governments, I suppose that time delays between public investment in risk reduction and benefits when hazards are infrequent, and the political invisibility of successful risk reduction can be pressures for a NIMTOF (Not in My Term of Office) attitude that leads to inaction.  And donors prefer the Superman of high profile disaster response to the Clark Kent of disaster risk reduction.

Whilst some countries are demonstrating excellence in DRR – Philippines, Bangladesh, Cuba – for the rest, it’s a ticking bomb.  Extreme and frequent severe weather events are on the increase.  The costs – financial and social – are high and rising.  Whilst it’s the big disasters which capture international attention, it is often the relentless attrition of the smaller events (to increase my jargon quota: ‘extensive risk’), which get no international or even national support, and which keep pushing people into poverty.

Poor women and men are almost always the most vulnerable to disasters, with precarious livelihoods, a lack of economic buffers, and living in risky environments where shocks occur frequently.  This is not primarily due to their lack of willingness or perverse attitudes to risk, but to inequalities in the distribution of rights, resources and power which prevent equitable risk-sharing and severely constrain risk reduction options. Put in slightly less policy-wonk language – risk is being dumped on poor people.

In 2007, Sufia’s youngest son was washed away by floods in Bangladesh whilst she was nursing her new-born baby; despite a frantic search, Sufia never found him. Now she has raised the level of her home above the flood level and has received training on preparing for floods. Credit: Dan Chung

To many of you, DRR probably seems like a rather technical (read boring) thing that humanitarians do sometimes.  You may think that they should be doing more of it.  But the trick is that reducing disaster risk has got to focus on addressing the underlying causes of risk, rather than treating the symptoms.  Without major changes to power, governance and voice, DRR can only ever be a bandaid.  And now we’re firmly in the territory of development.

Crucially, we’re talking about equity.  DRR is political, not a dry technical issue. The right to protection from disasters applies to all citizens – women, men, boys and girls – equally, including the most vulnerable and marginalised.  Women and girls tend to be more vulnerable precisely because of pre-existing inequalities. Deep seated forms of discrimination, reproduced by current socio-economic, political and cultural norms and practices, perpetuate the vulnerability of women and girls.

For example, Oxfam’s work in Jenggala village in eastern Indonesia found that women often had a better understanding of where floods and landslides were likely to occur, and were more vulnerable to them, because they are the ones who work in remote fields and hill-top gardens.  Yet holders of authority and power – husbands, community leaders, traditional social institutions – were often resistant to their involvement in disaster preparedness.  To try and overcome this, they identified and lobbied influential men in the community, to gain their support to ensure a 30 per cent quota for women’s participation in village DRR committees.

The knowledge and skills learnt through participating in DRR meetings and training, alongside diversified income from sources less vulnerable to weather-related destruction (bamboo handicrafts, coffee grinding, making dried banana chips) has increased women’s confidence and power.  Although it’s still early days, this is starting to shift men’s attitudes towards women and the importance of their role in village DRR.

This is great, but it’s one project.  We need more, much more of this.  Poor understanding of gender and DRR remains widespread and

Teaching women and children to swim in Viet Nam, as part of the community-based disaster risk reduction project. Credit: Doan Minh Cuong/Oxfam

must be addressed head-on. Hence Oxfam has developed some really useful resources on gender and DRR, and this is the theme for the 2012 International Day of Disaster Reduction (what, you didn’t have that in your diary already?), being observed tomorrow.

As just one small example of the problem, that old adage of What is not measured, is not managed holds true for DRR as much as anything else, but the overwhelming majority of countries (65 out of 82 for whom we have information) do not collect gender-disaggregated vulnerability and capacity information.

The next three years offer an outstanding opportunity to provide a boost to DRR work – the timelines for both the Hyogo Framework for Action and of course the MDGs finish in 2015 – so there is an opportunity to rewrite the script.  Getting disaster risk into whatever succeeds the MDGs is vital in order to underscore that disasters are a development issue, and empowering women and girls will lead to a more resilient future.

Meetings with Remarkable Women: Lan Mercado’s journey from megaphone to microphone

A while back, I wrote about some amazing Oxfam women I met in East Africa. Here’s another, this time from the Philippines.

Lan (real name Lilian, but Filipinos never use real names) is one of those quiet but effective (and very determined, and maybe not so quiet….) women that abound in development work. She

Lan, the megaphone years, circa 1985

was formerly our country director in the Philippines, but has now moved to head up a project on ASEAN (more on that below). She is also yet another Oxfam woman with a remarkable story. In 1988, as a 28 year old Communist Party activist in the Philippines civil war, her own Party denounced and arrested her on trumped-up charges of being involved in an intra-Party assassination. They held her for 6 months in the mountains, blindfolded and handcuffed in a cage. She and the other prisoners were tortured physically, mentally and emotionally. At least she avoided the fate of prisoners in other camps, who were forced to play ‘eeny meeny miny mo’, with the loser taken out, killed, and their blood smeared over the remaining prisoners.

Lan says she stayed sane by thinking about food, shopping malls, ‘normal life’. After her release, she felt compelled to try and understand how Party cadres became torturers, the various pressures that transformed what were otherwise good people. ‘Had I not done this, I would have turned into an angry and bitter woman, consumed by vengeance. It helped because it prevented me from thinking that all those years of being a CP member were a waste, and I was able to resume working for the same issues of justice and democracy, albeit outside of CP organs.’ She also sought out and interviewed 15 known torturers from the military.

The Party killed over 2,000 people in an orgy of purges and paranoia, before sanity returned as its leaders realized it was ‘eating its own tail’. Even after her release, Lan could not risk going home for two years, because the military would ‘seize me and show me as exhibit A, a ‘victim of the Communists’.’ Other people now working for Oxfam suffered similarly, one even wrote a book about it. A younger staffer’s father was a ‘military asset’ – a university lecturer who informed on leftwing students who were then disappeared by the military.

25 years on, Lan chairs the Peace Advocates for Truth, Healing and Justice (PATH), a group of survivors and the families and friends of those who perished. She is also seeking a way to erect memorials and establish ‘sites of conscience’ at the mass graves of those who died. ‘The search for truth and justice goes beyond impugning individuals, casting blame or sowing hatred. It is about reflecting on the dark moments of the Philippine Left’s history, and promoting healing and closure anchored on restorative justice rather than vindictiveness.’

Lan seems remarkably matter of fact about it all – ‘sure you can write about it, it’s on my Facebook page!’ she tells me, sipping beer in a bar where a guitarist covers ‘Wake up Little Suzy’, Tracy Chapman and Bob Marley. Another Oxfamista is appalled to hear that her hero in the movement was one of Lan’s torturers. It all feels quintessentially Filipino.

These days, Lan has come a long way from cages and guerrilla war, pursuing her activist agenda in the very heart of the Asian establishment – the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The region is prone to typhoons and earthquakes, accounting for 14% of the world total number of disasters, against just 9% of its people. Poignantly, ASEAN signed the ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response (AADMER) just 3 weeks before the deadly Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004, but then, as so often, it languished in bureaucratic in-trays, wending its way through ratification by ASEAN’s ten member governments and eventually coming into force on the 5th anniversary of the tsunami.

But Lan and other civil society activists saw the potential: ‘That was the opportunity. They had the text and no implementation strategy’.

and now, with microphone

A coalition of CSOs lobbied the ASEAN secretariat and member nation ambassadors and got them to accept their support, in the form of the APG (AADMER Partnership Group), which Lan now works for on secondment from Oxfam: ‘The deal was we would help write the strategies for the implementation of AADMER provided there was a good country-level consultation process on how to make AADMER pro-people.’

Working as an advisor to the ASEAN secretariat, she now speaks the language of committees, acronyms and procedures ‘We’re now embedded. Our contributions have been recognised by the ASEAN Committee on Disaster Management and our programme to facilitate partnerships between ASEAN and CSOs was accepted by the Conference of Parties.’

Some of the main achievements of the APG to date:

• The formation of the APG and the secondment of Oxfam advisors demonstrated to the ASEAN that there is a non-threatening way of engaging with CSOs; and showed CSOs that there is another way for civil society to engage with the ASEAN apart from lobbying and mass actions. The ASEAN Committee on Disaster Management has agreed to develop a framework for partnership with CSOs, with the APG facilitating the process.

• APG activities at the country and regional levels increased public and civil society awareness of AADMER, which was previously known only to specialised agencies of government. AADMER had been used by country actors in Myanmar, for example, to engage with the national government on humanitarian concerns.

• APG advisors drafted a range of AADMER implementation strategies (training, knowledge management and so on) and is currently co-organising the ASEAN Day on Disaster Management, which highlights the role of women in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR).

It all sounds very bureaucratic and unheroic, but Lan sees her work on ASEAN as just another step (from megaphone to microphone?) in a life devoted to social justice. People working in NGOs are often like icebergs, with a below-the-waterline history that can be quite astounding. Discovering such histories (usually by accident, often over a beer) is just another perk of the job.

Prices that bounce – Naomi Hossain on the human face of the food crisis

Oxfam and IDS are starting work on Life in a Time of Food Price Volatility, a 4 year project combining qualitative and quantitative methods to track the human impact in communities in 10 countries, building on the methodology behind our 2011 report, Living on a Spike. Richard King at Oxfam and Naomi Hossain at IDS are running the project. Here, Naomi (right) reports back on one research trip to the rubber tappers of Indonesia.

I’m just back from South Kalimantan, part of Indonesian Borneo, where the idea that future food prices are likely to be jump even higher because of extreme weather events feels very real. Climate, energy, food and global economic crisis all feature in an alarming combination of volatilities. In the Banjarese community where IDS/Oxfam partners SMERU have been researching the social impacts of crisis since 2009, most people are rubber tappers. The past year has been particularly up-and-down, mainly down, even by the elastic standards of rubber producers.

We went to see one family, where the newly-single mother and household head – call her Siti – panicked when she saw us. ‘I’ve already paid’, she said. ‘I’ve paid for this month’. She thought we were debt collectors and was already behind on her first (I suspect also last) instalment for her new motorbike, easily the most popular means of getting about Indonesia. Siti needed it because she had recently shed her violent unfaithful husband, and was looking after four children on the wages of a rubber tapper (her working hours are 2am till 10am, when the rubber is fresh and the weather is cool).

The wages of rubber tappers are well down on last year, mostly because rubber prices have been affected by the double dip in the global economy, but partly due to the unusually dry season. Sofian told us he and his wife Fatiyah were earning 2.25 million (about US$ 240) rupiah per month this time last year; now they were getting 600,000 to 700,000 (US$ 63-73), depending on quality and quantity of their rubber. That is for two adults putting in a shared 7 hour shift between 4 and 9am, 6 days a week.

But as the price of rubber has sunk, the price of most food has steadily risen. People still eat rice in the same quantities or mix it with noodles – work is physical and they need the energy – but have cut down on fish. And, presumably because of the soybean crisis in the US, the high protein staple of the poor, tempe (soybean cake), has doubled in price. As the motorcycle grocer explained as he sped off, the price is the same, so he halves quantities.

Focus groups told another story. Their main problem, they tell us, is water. Some people think it is deforestation that has caused the water problems in Kalimantan, but in this part of Banjar, people point to the growing presence of the coal-mines. A popular community development  programme (PNPM) devised a water pump project in an area with a water source, only to find that by the time it was installed, the water had disappeared, sunk without a trace, as the coal-mines dug deeper into the earth. The mining company has bought up lots of local land, at cheap but still attractive prices, so many local people no longer farm their own land. But they are also too poor to get the education they need to work for the mining companies as drivers or mechanics. It’s all lose-lose here, at least until the rubber price picks up or food prices go down again.

Naomi Hossain is a Research Fellow in the Participation, Power and Social Change research team at IDS. This piece first appeared on the IDS team website.

Extreme weather, extreme prices: what will more erratic weather do to food prices?

Oxfam Climate Change Policy Adviser Tracy Carty summarizes her new paper, published today

With greenhouse gas emissions at an all time high, and the world lurching towards a third food price spike in four years following the worst US drought since the 1950s, there is an alarming gap in our knowledge – how will an increase in extreme weather caused by climate change affect future food prices?

To date, research on food prices and climate change has looked almost exclusively at the averages: how gradually rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns will affect long-run average prices. It points to a future of higher food prices: Oxfam-commissioned research last year suggested food prices could double in the next 20 years; with up to half the increase caused by climate change (see also research by IFPRI and Stanford University).

Alarming, but only half the story. Climate change will also lead to an increase in extreme weather, such as droughts, floods and heatwaves. As today’s US drought lays bare, extreme weather can wipe out harvests and drive up prices precipitously in the short term. But current research does not account for how these extremes might affect future global food prices. (Though there has been some regional analysis).

Oxfam felt it was time to have a go, so we commissioned some more research from the Institute of Development Studies. Published today, it uses CGE modelling to look at the impact of extreme weather scenarios on global food prices in 2030. CGE models have their flaws and are certainly not predictive instruments, but they do help us think through broad possible scenarios for whole systems.

The research highlights some top line trends that can plausibly be expected in a world of more frequent and intense weather extremes. While average prices could double by 2030, the modelling suggests that one or more extreme events in a single year could bring about price spikes of comparable magnitude to two decades of projected long-run price increases.

The research suggests that in 2030 the world could be even more vulnerable to the kind of drought happening today in the US, as dependence on US exports of wheat and maize is predicted to rise, whilst climate change increases the likelihood of extreme droughts in North America. The US Department of Agriculture recently estimated that climate change could cost corn belt farmers between US$1.1 to $4 billion annually by 2030. Even based on a conservative scenario, the modelling shows a drought of similar magnitude to the US drought in 1988 could raise the price of maize by as much as 140 per cent in 2030 (see fig 2).

The modelling also shows dramatic impacts in sub-Saharan Africa in 2030 – the consumer price of maize and other coarse grains in southern Africa could increase by as much as 120 per cent, on top of already higher average prices (see fig 3).

Food security experts working on the next IPCC Assessment recently warned that governments should take more account of how weather extremes could affect food supplies. Because if the climate becomes increasingly erratic, food production and prices will too, with devastating consequences for the lives of livelihoods of people living in poverty. 

Governments ‘stress-tested’ the banks after the financial crisis.  Our global food system is also too big to fail, and needs stress-testing to fully assess and address its critical thresholds in relation to climate change. Stress testing would seek to understand feasible worst case scenarios and identify the levels, locations and likelihood of vulnerability that could occur.  This includes major crop producing regions most at risk; the impact of multiple harvest failures in the same year, as well as the cumulative impact of significant yield shocks becoming more common; impacts on food deficit low income countries; and interactions with other major threats to the food system, such as high oil prices.

This research is just one more contribution to the overwhelming case for action. The necessary policy responses are well documented: reducing emissions, adapting to climate change, and building the resilience of markets and people in poverty (see here, here, here and here). The real unknown is how bad things have to get before we start to see concerted action.

Tracy Carty is Climate Change Policy Adviser at Oxfam GB

Three x 4 minute videos for World Humanitarian Day (that’s today)

Three thought-provoking short pieces from the slightly Orwellian-sounding Security Management Initiative in support of today’s UN World Humanitarian Day

Access and Acceptance

Risk

Principles and Pragmatism