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Assessing outcomes is an integral component of adaptive management. Positive changes are the goal, but unfulfilled objectives offer lessons for shifting to more effective strategies.
Assessing outcomes is an integral component of adaptive management. Positive changes are the goal, but unfulfilled objectives offer lessons for shifting to more effective strategies.
Absorb
The capacity of a system to absorb shocks, or stressors, is indicative of its resilience. Absorption of shocks within fragile systems – whether human communities or ecosystems – is particularly challenging.
Communities and ecosystems across the Sahel region are stressed and susceptible to intense unusual shocks such as droughts and floods. However, the cultures and the ecosystems exist today because they have inherited certain traits that often provide an unexpected resilience in the face of change.
Building resilient food systems to meet basic food security and nutrition provides a critical buffer to shocks of all kinds. Ecological restoration, social safeguards, early warning systems, and anticipatory actions also reduce negative impacts from inevitable stressors.
Adapt
The inevitability of change is certain, both in ecosystems and human communities. The intensity and velocity of that change can be particularly profound in regions such as the Sahel. As a result, adaptation is a critical survival mechanism. In the case of the Tandou Valley, adaptive planning and adaptive management offer a path forward that embraces both traditional knowledge and innovation.
Adapting traditional food systems to shifting ecological and social realities provides a key step toward resilience. Initiatives focused on asset creation and ecosystem rehabilitation, Smallholder Agricultural Market Support (SAMS), local procurement for School Feeding programs, and Nutrition Support Packages exemplify adaptation to new environmental and economic landscapes.
Transform
Food systems transformation follows initiatives that target ecological restoration and food and nutrition security. At that point, the capacity to transform food production and food systems infrastructure increases and a more resilient future comes into focus – one that gradually shifts from assistance to increased self-sufficiency and regional interdependence.
Transformation requires another level of planning and, more critically, an intensified commitment to collaboration. The Integrated Resilience Programme focuses on strengthening local, national, and regional institutional capacities as the key to driving systems change. Success is dependent upon bringing together collaborators from different sectors and perspectives. In the case of the Tandou Valley, the community enhances its own capacity by strengthening its regional network and its integration into Chad’s food systems.
Ecological Benefits Framework (EBF)
The Ecological Benefits Framework (EBF) focuses on six ecological benefits: air, water, soil, biodiversity, equity, and carbon. These ecological benefits are fundamental to the work of the World Food Programme. EBF puts food, nutrition, and equity into a place-based context that shows the integral relationships between ecosystems, food systems, and food security.
Using a peer-reviewed collection of Lex Icons, EBF provides a common language and visual interface for expressing the impacts of WFP projects, at local, regional, and international scales.
About
The Greening platform is produced by The Lexicon with support from the World Food Programme. The World Food Programme is scaling resilience in the Tandou Valley and other communities across the five countries in the Sahel. The Resilience Monitoring and Measurement framework shows positive outcomes in ecological restoration, food and nutrition security, economic empowerment, access to social services, reduction of daily hardships, and social cohesion.
Team
Lexicon of Impacts is based on the Ecological Benefits Framework (EBF). This new paradigm provides a foundational architecture to radically transform global carbon, biodiversity, and ecological benefits markets. Coordinating financial institutions, UN agencies, NGOs, companies, and catalytic capital will bring attention to—and help create—a shared pathway for accelerated solutions, providing economic support for the people and projects that need it most.
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