Background
In the emergency and development sectors, activities are increasingly orientated to understanding and building resilience to reduce the risks associated with acute and chronic shocks. In order to build greater nutrition resilience, emphasis on a continuum or contiguum of financing, programming, coordination and system wide strengthening is needed.
A recently completed ENN review of the financing arrangements for scaling up management of acute malnutrition has highlighted the importance of adopting a nutrition resilience lens in scaling up nutrition programmes to prevent and treat acute malnutrition. Furthermore, the realisation of nutrition resilience will require a much greater emphasis on a continuum of humanitarian and development financing, the scale up (and scale down) of programming according to the incidence of acute malnutrition, coordination and strengthening of government systems. A conceptual and programmatic review is needed in order to better define what nutrition resilience is and what it means in programming terms to build resilience through nutrition actions.
Project summary
During 2015 the ENN completed a desk-based review of the interconnections between resilience and nutrition as evidenced in the guidance of 6 international donors (Canada, the EU, Germany, Ireland, the UK, and the USA) and the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). It examines commonality in donor thinking and approaches on resilience and how this has impacted on their thinking and approaches on nutrition (or could do so in future). Financing and institutional arrangements within donor organizations to support a resilience agenda were also examined as were the metrics for measurement of outputs and outcomes of resilience programming. The review also considers how hard-won lessons from the nutrition sector can be of value to those working for increased resilience and concludes by setting out potential next steps. The report has been finalised and is available below.