1. Resilience Concepts and Measurement Workshop
2.2 Applications of Resilience Analyses: Evidence from Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Niger and Burkina Faso
Tim Frankenberger
TANGO International
Washington, D.C.
January 12, 2017

2. Session 2.2 Overview
Overview of resilience studies and analyses using empirical evidence from studies focused on measuring resilience:
Pastoralist Areas Resilience Improvement and Market Expansion (PRIME) program in Ethiopia
Build the Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters Program (BRACED) in Kenya and Uganda
Resilience in the Sahel Enhanced (RISE) initiative in Niger and Burkina Faso

3. Background
The combined effect of climate changes, economic forces and socio-political conditions have increased the frequency and severity of risk exposure among vulnerable populations.
For this reason interest in resilience has increased with an associated call for measurement.

4. Recall Resilience Definitions
Reminder, in this research, resilience is viewed as:
a set of capacities that enable households and communities to effectively function in the face of shocks and stresses and still meet a set of well-being outcomes.
Three resilience capacities:
Absorptive capacity,
Adaptive capacity,
Transformative capacity.

5. Indicators of Resilience Capacity
Indicators of Resilience Capacity Employed for the PRIME Project Impact Evaluation
Indicators of Resilience Capacity
Absorptive Capacity
Household perceived ability to recover from shocks
Social capital (bonding)
Access to informal community safety nets
Asset ownership
Cash savings
Availability of hazard insurance
Availability of a disaster preparedness and mitigation program
Adaptive Capacity
Household aspirations and confidence to adapt
Exposure to information
Human capital
Social capital (bridging and linking)
Diversity of livelihoods
Access to financial resources
Asset ownership
Transformative Capacity
Availability of formal safety nets in communities
Access to markets
Access to infrastructure
Access to basic services
Access to livestock services
Access to communal natural resources
Social capital (bridging and linking)

6. Specific Components of Resilience Indices Examined in this Presentation
Social Capital (Bonding, Bridging and Linking)
Livelihood Diversification
Psycho-social dimensions (e.g., aspirations and confidence to adapt)

7. Studies: PRIME
PRIME project intervention areas
Pastoralist Areas Resilience Improvement through Market Expansion
USAID Ethiopia Feed the Future
Project goals:
Increase household incomes.
Enhance resilience.
Improve climate change adaptive capacity.
Program beneficiaries
pastoralists, agro-pastoralist, non-pastoralists
Geographic location
2 areas in Ethiopia (Borena and Jijiga)
Data
Baseline (2013)
Interim monitoring data (2014 – 2015, 6 months)
Baseline & IMS data = qualitative & quantitative

8. Studies: BRACED
Karamoja, Uganda
Build the Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters Program
Mercy Corps
Project goals:
Enhance resilience
Improve climate change adaptive capacity
Public sector engagement & service delivery
Program beneficiaries
vulnerable groups, esp. women and girls
Geographic location
Karamoja, Uganda
Wajir county, Kenya
Data
Baseline (quantitative)
Wajir county, Kenya

9. Studies: RISE Resilience in the Sahel Enhanced Initiative Goal
Increase the resilience of chronically vulnerable populations in agro-pastoral and marginal agriculture livelihood zones of the Sahel.
Program beneficiaries
Agriculturalist, pastoralist , other
Geographic location
Burkina Faso (Eastern, Northern Central, and Sahel)
Niger (Zinder, Maradi and Tillabery)
Data
Baseline (quantitative)
RISE area

10. Samples from Project Areas
Project area
# of
households
communities
PRIME
Jijiga
1398 32
Borena
1744 41
BRACED
Karamoja
553 24
Wajir
563 10
RISE
Burkina Faso and Niger
2492
100

11. Shocks & Resilience Capacities Analysis
Hypothesis 1: each of the 3 resilience capacities help mitigate adverse effects of shocks (drought, food price spikes)
Data: PRIME, BRACED and RISE baseline surveys
Analysis
Regressions were run with reported recovery from shocks as the dependent variable against the three types of resilience capacity, along with explanatory variables (e.g., demographic characteristics and shock exposure)
Dependent variable is a ranked categorical variable (e.g., ‘not recovered’ to ‘ fully recovered’)
Separate regressions were run with each resilience capacity to measure the impact of each capacity

12. The Effect of Resilience Capacities in Mitigating Shocks
All 3 resilience capacities (absorptive, adaptive and transformative capacity) contributed in some way to making households resilient to shocks in PRIME, BRACED, and RISE program areas.

13. PRIME Impact Evaluation: Results
Community
Resilience
Relationship implied by regression results between the shock exposure index and HFIAS for three different values of the resilience capacity index. As resilience capacity increases, household food insecurity is less sensitive to shock exposure, represented by the relative slopes of the three lines (flatter=less sensitive). In other words, as resilience capacity increases, shocks are less likely to result in worsening household hunger.

14. Links Between Resilience & FS (RISE Baseline)
Resilience capacity (RC)–mediated relationship between drought exposure (months of agricultural drought) and food security
Greater household resilience capacity reduces negative impacts of agricultural drought on food security.

15. Social Capital Social capital can be described as:
The quantity and quality of social resources (networks, membership in groups, social relations, and access to wider institutions in society) upon which people draw in pursuit of livelihoods.
Signs of well-developed social capital include:
Close interaction between people through tight-knit communities;
The ability to rely on others in times of crisis; and
Open communication between stakeholder groups.
Previous research demonstrates that social capital strongly influences community level resilience
Communities with high social capital rally together
Disasters may sometimes enhance social capital because they activate or give rise to neighborhood associations and collective organizations that can be used to disseminate vital information, provide community members with a voice, and afford leverage to assist in taking control of rebuilding efforts.

16. Types of Social Capital
Bonding social capital is seen in the bonds between community or group members.
Bridging social capital connects members of one community or group to members of other communities/groups.
Linking social capital is often conceived of as a vertical link between a network and some form of authority.

17. Social Capital Hypotheses
H1: Households with greater levels of social capital (bonding, bridging, and linking) achieve greater levels of food security than those with less social capital, all else equal.
H2: Households with greater levels of social capital (bonding, bridging, and linking) are able to recover better than those with less social capital, all else equal.
H3: For a given level of exposure to shocks, households with more social capital report fewer negative impacts of shocks than households with less social capital, all else equal.
H4: Wealthier households have greater levels of social capital (bonding, bridging, and linking) and are better able to both receive and give assistance (in the form of money or food) than those of poorer households.

18. Social Capital Conclusions
Social capital appears to have a positive effect on food security, helps households recover, and mitigates the effect of shocks across the different data sets.
Thus social capital appears to be critical to resilience.
Wealthier households appear to receive the benefits of social capital more than poorer households.
Social capital can be used up in the early phases of a prolonged covariate shock and its downstream effects.

19. Effects of livelihood diversity on recovery and shock impact
Activities in which households engage their skills, capacities, and physical resources to create income or otherwise improve their way of life.
Rural livelihood diversification
The process by which households construct an increasingly varied portfolio of activities, social support capabilities, and assets for survival or to improve their standard of living.
Source: Assan 2014; Ellis 2000a, 1999; Chambers and Conway 1992

20. Livelihoods hypotheses
H1: Households with greater levels of livelihood diversity achieve greater levels of resilience than those who have less diversification, all else equal.
H2: Wealthier households are able to diversify their livelihood sources more than poorer households, all else equal.
H3: Poorer households are pushed into livelihoods with lower returns, and are less able to access livelihoods with greater and less risky returns.
Data: PRIME & BRACED baselines
This is what we tried to assess; what we found was a bit different (on next slides).

21. Livelihoods Results
Livelihood diversification as a mechanism to better cope with shocks and stresses needs to be better understood in the context in which programs are being implemented.
Diversification can work where there are opportunities to engage in high return activities and in areas where significant non-climate sensitive options exist.
Livelihood diversification in areas where such opportunities do not exist will not necessarily lead to better adaptation.

22. Subjective and psychosocial factors
Psychosocial measures that are posited to influence adaptive capacity
Risk perception
Perceived risk of experiencing a slow-onset or sudden shock.
Perceived risk associated with employing certain strategies to maintain or improve wellbeing after a shock.
Self-efficacy
“Belief in one’s own ability to perform a task and to manage prospective situations.”
Aspirations
Fatalism is “the sense of being powerless to enact change and having no control over life’s events” (TANGO 2014; Smith et al. 2015)

23. Conceptual framework representing two components of resilience

24. Psychosocial Hypotheses
H1: Subjective resilience influences households' response to shocks/stressors.
H 2: Psycho-social factors influence the people’s ability to recover from shocks/stressors.
Data used:
(1) Fishing communities in Ghana, Fiji, Vietnam and Sri Lanka (Béné et al. 2016).
(2) Rural households in 2 regions of Ethiopia (Smith et al. 2015).

25. H1: Psychosocial Results
We found negative correlations between households' level of subjective resilience (i.e., self-efficacy score) and the propensity of those households to engage in coping strategies.
The higher the sense of control people have over their lives and the more positive the perception about their own ability to handle (future) shocks/stressors, the lower the likelihood that these households will engage in detrimental short term responses.
The Ghana-Fiji-Vietnam-Sri-Lanka dataset clearly demonstrated that households with higher than average subjective resilience also have a higher likelihood to engage in transformative strategies

26. H2: Psychosocial Results
Ghana-Fiji-Vietnam-Sri-Lanka dataset:
A correlation between the level of subjective resilience and the household's resilience index was significant and positive.
Ethiopian dataset
A positive correlation between the self-efficacy score and the recovery index for both Jijiga and Borena.
The perception that people have of their level of control over their own life positively influences their ability to recover from shocks/stressors.

27. Summary of Key Findings
Shocks, resilience & response trajectories
All 3 resilience capacities contributed in some way to making households resilient.
Ongoing monitoring is needed (6 months-1 year).
Shocks measurement needs to include both objective and subjective data.
Social capital
Social capital appears to have a positive effect on food security, helps households recover, and mitigates the effect of shocks across the different data sets.
Social capital appears to be critical to resilience.
Social capital can mitigate early impacts of a shock but may be used up by a prolonged shock and its downstream effects.

28. Summary of Key Findings
Livelihood diversity, recovery & shock impact
Livelihood diversification needs to be understood in the program context (e.g., opportunities exist to engage in high return activities and non-climate sensitive options).
Psycho-social factors
People’s perceived level of control over their own life positively influences their ability to recover from shocks/stressors.
The higher the sense of control people have over their lives and the more positive the perception about their own ability to handle (future) shocks/stressors, the lower the likelihood that these households will engage in detrimental short term responses.

29. References
Woodson, L, Frankenberger, T., Smith, L., Langworthy, M. & Presnall, C The effects of social capital on resilience: Evidence from Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Niger and Burkina Faso. Nairobi, Kenya: A joint ILRI and TANGO International publication (in press).
Bower, T., Frankenberger, T., Nelson, S., Finan, T. & Langworthy, M The effect of livelihood diversity on recovery and shock impact in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. Nairobi, Kenya: A joint ILRI and TANGO International publication (in press).
Béné, C., Frankenberger, T., Langworthy, M., Mueller, M. & Martin, S The influence of subjective and psychosocial factors on people's resilience: conceptual framework and empirical evidence. Nairobi, Kenya: A joint ILRI and TANGO International publication.
Bower, T., Presnall, C., Frankenberger, T., Smith, L., Brown, V. & Langworthy, M Shocks, resilience capacities and response trajectories over time. Nairobi, Kenya: A joint ILRI and TANGO International publication (in press).