Archive for: Resilience


As Kenya faces drought and recurring food insecurity, building resilience among the nation’s vulnerable populations is more important than ever before. Resilience means how well and how quickly people, their families, communities, and the country can respond to, adapt to, and recover from shocks and stresses. This video explains how family planning can help to build resilience in Kenya. Developed in partnership with the National Council for Population and Development (NCPD) and with generous support from USAID Kenya and East Africa through the Policy, Advocacy, and Communication Enhanced for Population and Reproductive Health (PACE) Project, PRB has created a short video that outlines the connections between family planning and resilience in Kenya. This video will be shared with policymakers in Kenya, particularly those from nonhealth sectors, as part of communication strategy that seeks to strengthen commitment to multisectoral approaches to family planning.

Year: 2017

Source: Population Reference Bureau

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    The effects of global climate change are being felt disproportionately in the world’s poorest countries, where people are the least able to cope. As climate change adaptation strategies gain international attention, it is important to show how people are dealing with the effects of climate change, how they could become more resilient to these effects, and how people and communities can adapt to climate change. Using qualitative methods, PAI, in collaboration with Miz-Hsab Research Center and the Joint Global Change Research Institute, explored how Ethiopian communities react to and cope with climate variation, which groups are the most vulnerable, what resources communities need to adapt to climate change, and the role of family planning and reproductive health in increasing resilience to climate change impacts. This study was one of the first to explore the linkages of population, fertility and family size with aspects of vulnerability and resilience to climate change.

    Year: 2009

    Source: PAI

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      On March 31, 2016, the Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance III Project (FANTA) hosted a webinar to discuss why it is important to link family planning and food security, how family planning contributes to building resilience and promoting climate-compatible development, and how lessons and experiences from multisectoral population, health, and environment programs can be applied to food security programs.

      Year: 2016

      Source: FHI 360 | FANTA Project

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        This paper synthesizes four case studies from Uganda, Myanmar, Sudan/Chad, and Burkina Faso, documenting strategies towards building gender equality through resilience projects. The purpose is to document how gender inequalities manifest themselves in all four locations; how gender is conceptualised in theories of change (ToCs); the operationalisation of objectives to tackle gender inequalities; internal and external obstacles to the implementation of gender-sensitive activities; and drivers that help NGOs transform gender relations and build resilience. The case studies describe how disasters and climate change affect gender groups and underscore the patriarchal social norms that disproportionately restrict women and girls’ equal access to rights and resources. This paper aims to demonstrate how to draw on promising practices to make resilience projects inclusive and equitable. It also recommends areas where further research could increase understanding of resilience to climate extremes and longer-term changes, and suggests how donors and funding can best support efforts to build communities’ resilience.

        Year: 2016

        Source: The BRACED Project

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          Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is undergoing major transformations. In the last decade, the region has experienced strong economic growth, reduced maternal and infant deaths, increased levels of education, and new advances in technologies and telecommunications—creating the conditions for a robust future. However, recent economic growth rates have slowed, underscoring the need for new strategies. Persistent high rates of population growth threaten to undermine future economic growth as well as other social and development advancements. In addition, more than 335 million people live in poverty and many are left out of the progress. The great challenges leaders face are how to cope with growing populations, reduce poverty and inequity, build the resilience of those most vulnerable, be competitive in today’s global economy, and improve people’s lives without compromising the environment or the well-being of future generations.

          Tackling these challenges requires cross-sectoral collaboration, innovative approaches, and making the most of all available interventions. Family planning is one intervention that could and should be further leveraged. This review examines the critical role of voluntary family planning in Africa’s future. It provides an overview of the status of family planning over the last five years, and explores family planning’s tremendous potential to make a difference in many of the social and economic obstacles facing SSA today.

          Year: 2016

          Source: Population Reference Bureau

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            The purpose of the CoDriVE-PD tool is to enable communities to articulate their experience of how they are being impacted by climatic and non-climatic forces, identify and assess their areas of vulnerability or “development deficits” and encourage them to plan for and undertake adaptive actions to build resilience and reduce vulnerability. CoDriVE-PD is community-engaging, easy-to-use, sensitive enough to capture the different types and degrees of vulnerabilities across communities and regions, and it is oriented towards adaptive action. It has been rigorously tested and validated in different social, economic and agro-ecological contexts in four different Indian states. To support easy, quick, and large-scale application of this tool, Watershed Organization Trust (WOTR) has developed a web-based software program that enables processing and analysis of key data with a view to generating a vulnerability profile as well as situation-specific adaptive actions to be undertaken.

            Year: 2014

            Source: Watershed Organization Trust

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              Both the family planning sector and the environmental sector will be interested in this synopsis of findings from a study of the first four years of the Tuungane integrated population, health and environment (PHE) project in Tanzania. Analyses of the 2011 baseline and 2016 midline quantitative data, and additional qualitative data from 2016, measured the project’s progress and shed light on the contribution of the project interventions to building resilience, and on the links between family planning and other components of resilience. This synopsis focuses on several key indicators of resilience that relate to population, family planning, and reproductive health.

              Year: 2018

              Source: The Evidence Project

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                Climate change impacts fall disproportionately on the world’s poorest, most marginalised communities, particularly those highly dependent on direct use of natural resources, such as subsistence fishing communities. Vulnerability to climate change involves social and ecological factors, and efforts to reduce it and build long-term resilience must target both. In Madagascar, generalised strategies developed at the national level address vulnerability, adding to a variety of international initiatives. Yet, such high-level planning inevitably remains vague and indeterminate for most of the island’s coastal communities, with little meaningful implementation on the ground. Therefore, local measures to build resilience and adaptive capacity are critical to ensure that resource-dependent communities are able to cope with the immediate and long-term effects of climate change. Examination of an integrated population-health-environment (PHE) programme in Madagascar, comprising a locally-managed marine area (LMMA) and socio-economic development activities, illustrates how practical initiatives can contribute to building immediate and long-lasting resilience and adaptive capacity. Such community-based approaches should play a key role in adaptation measures within the western Indian Ocean region, where many coastal communities live in severe poverty on the front line of a rapidly changing climate.

                Year: 2012

                Source: Western Indian Ocean Journal of Marine Science

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                  The impacts of climate change—climbing temperatures, extreme weather, drought, shifting rainfall patterns, and rising sea levels—are intensifying around the world. These impacts threaten to undo development progress in poor and vulnerable communities, where rapid population growth and unmet need for family planning contribute to limited capacity to adapt. This webinar provides an overview of the climate finance landscape and explore strategies that the family planning community can use to join with others in efforts to build resilience to climate change impacts. Speakers and participants shared views on ways to forge partnerships for multisectoral climate adaptation projects that are eligible for multilateral climate change adaptation funding. Experiences and perspectives shared may also be useful for other organizations seeking to access this type of climate adaptation funding.

                  Year: 2018

                  Source: Population Reference Bureau

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                    New research indicates that voluntary family planning and use of maternal and child health facilities is positively associated with resilience. Resilience has a range of definitions and operates at different scales. It is generally understood as the ability of an individual, household, community, or system to cope with shocks by responding in ways that maintain their essential functions while expanding their capacity to adapt to change. This fact sheet discusses the findings of a study that aimed to determine the factors associated with resilience with the goal of understanding how to build resilience among people in ecologically rich rural regions who rely on natural resources for their livelihoods. The research provides quantitative and qualitative evidence that the association between voluntary family planning and maternal and child health and resilience is robust across a range of factors and broadly related to the construct of resilience.

                    Year: 2019

                    Source: Population Reference Bureau

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