Building Resilience for Food and Nutrition Security

Poor countries and vulnerable people are being hit by a barrage of economic, environmental, and political shocks, and these shocks are becoming more frequent and intense. There is a general understanding that building resilience means helping individuals, households, communities, and countries prepare for, cope with, and recover from such shocks. However, there is far less understanding about resilience within the context of food and nutrition security.

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and its 2020 Vision Initiative, along with partners (including Irish Aid), are organizing an international conference on “Building Resilience for Food and Nutrition Security” to be held on May 15-17, 2014, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The global conference is the centerpiece of a two-year global consultative process.

The ultimate objective of this consultation process is to inform, influence, and catalyze action by key actors—policymakers, nongovernmental organizations, the private sector, educators, and researchers—to incorporate resilience into the post-2015 agenda and improve policies, investments, and institutions to strengthen resilience so that food and nutrition security can be achieved for all.

Specialists from the resilience and vulnerability communities as well as leading experts and practitioners from food and nutrition security, agriculture, humanitarian, and related development sectors will come together to assess emerging shocks that threaten food and nutrition security, to identify approaches and tools for building resilience, to set priorities for action by different actors and in different regions, and to identify knowledge and action gaps.

The conference focus is in line with Ireland’s top development policy priority of reducing hunger and building people’s resilience to natural disasters and other shocks.