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This paper investigates the use of early warning tools as part of Ethiopia's Disaster Risk Management framework. Analyzing, in particular, the Livelihoods, Early Assessment and Protection tool, Livelihood Integrated Assessment and Hotspots Assessments, the paper delineates the scope and objectives of existing early warning tools, their commonalities and limitations. From a disaster risk financing and insurance perspective, the paper investigates possible enhancements in the existing early warning framework and its use that could facilitate greater timeliness of drought response. The paper argues that based on the existing early warning instruments and continued improvements to the early warning systems, it is possible to enable early action during the onset of a drought.

Upon request of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Principals at their meeting on December 11, 2015, the World Bank agreed to coordinate a process of reviewing key issues and options for significantly scaling up the use of multipurpose cash transfers (MPCTs; including digital cash and vouchers) in the humanitarian space. This note lays out the main findings and options emerging from the process. The main text is complemented by a set of seven appendixes, detailing the process and feedback received, as well as presenting a thorough review of the evidence and evidence gaps in the comparative effectiveness of cash and in-kind programs across humanitarian objectives. This note synthesizes main issues and findings from the process, including defining overarching issues (section 2), setting out the overall context in which a wider use of cash should be considered (section 3), and identifying the specific areas to help unleash a wider use of cash transfers when and where appropriate (section 4).

There is wide variation in how consumption is measured in household surveys both across countries and over time. This variation may confound welfare comparisons in part because these alternative survey designs produce consumption estimates that are differentially influenced by contrasting types of survey response error. Although previous studies have documented the extent of net error in alternative survey designs, little is known about the relative influence of the different response errors that underpin a survey estimate. This study leverages a recent randomized food consumption survey experiment in Tanzania to shed light on the relative influence of these various error types. The observed deviation of measured household consumption from a benchmark is decomposed into item-specific consumption incidence and consumption value so as to investigate effects related to (a) the omission of any consumption and then (b) the error in value reporting conditional on positive consumption. The results show that various survey designs exhibit widely differing error decompositions, and hence a simple summary comparison of the total recorded consumption across surveys will obscure specific error patterns and inhibit the lessons for improved consumption survey design. In light of these findings, the relative performance of common survey designs is discussed, and design lessons are drawn to enhance the accuracy of item-specific consumption reporting and, consequently, the measures of total household food consumption.

The longstanding “cash versus food” debate has received renewed attention in both research and practice. This paper reviews key issues shaping the debate and presents new evidence from randomized and quasi-experimental evaluations that deliberately compare cash and in-kind food transfers in ten developing counties. Findings show that relative effectiveness cannot be generalized: although some differences emerge in terms of food consumption and dietary diversity, average impacts tend to depend on context, specific objectives, and their measurement. Costs for cash transfers and vouchers tend to be significantly lower relative to in-kind food. Yet the consistency and robustness of methods for efficiency analyses varies greatly.

With more than three-quarters of its workforce employed in agriculture, Malawi is highly vulnerable to any adverse events affecting the agriculture sector, and agricultural risks are ever present in the country. Agricultural risks can obstruct development and enforce poverty traps, particularly for a country as reliant on agriculture as Malawi. Because of the size of the sector in the economy and the importance of agricultural products for export, agricultural growth correlates closely with gross domestic product (GDP) growth. Malawi’s effort to manage risks and to provide relief in response to adverse events diverts significant resources from longer-term development investments. To better understand the dynamics of agricultural risks and identify appropriate responses, incorporate an agricultural risk perspective into decision making, and build the capacity of local stakeholders in risk assessment and management, the agricultural risk management team (ARMT) of the agriculture and environment services department of the World Bank conducted an agriculture sector risk assessment. The purpose of this report is to assess existing agricultural risks, prioritize them according to their frequency and impacts on the sector, and identify areas of risk-management solutions that need deeper specialized attention. Three levels of risks were assessed: production risks, market risks, and enabling environment risks to selected supply chains. The report takes a quantitative and qualitative approach to assessing risk. This report is structured as follows: chapter one gives introduction and context. Chapter two provides an overview of the agriculture sector and the selected crops. Chapter three maps the production, market, and enabling environment risks to food crops and export crops. Chapter four looks at the adverse impacts of agricultural risks in terms of losses, both at the national level and for different regions. Chapter five prioritizes the risks in terms of their frequency and the severity of their impacts, and discusses solutions based on this prioritization, ongoing risk-management activities, and the feedback from the consultative workshop.

Labor-intensive public works programs are important social protection tools in low-income settings, intended to supplement income of poor households and improve public infrastructure. In this evaluation of the Malawi Social Action Fund, an at-scale, government-operated program, across- and within-village randomization is used to estimate effects on food security and use of fertilizer. There is no evidence that the program improves food security, and some negative spillovers to untreated households. These disappointing results hold even under modifications to the design of the program to offer work during the lean rather than harvest season or increase the frequency of payments.

Public Work Programs (PWPs) can be a useful tool for poverty reduction and social protection provision in Myanmar by presenting a coherent framework to achieve several objectives (seasonal income and food security, disaster recovery, community resilience, social cohesion). For PWPsto be effective and sustainable, design should respond to local conditions and implementation should engage government structures that provide a scalable platform.

This paper discusses how catastrophe crop risk models can be used to assess food security needs at the sovereign level for the purpose of risk transfer. The rationale for a system to evaluate food security needs at the national level is discussed. The role of technology and remote sensing data availability as an enabler of catastrophe crop risk models is discussed followed by a description of the framework of catastrophe crop models for droughts, representing the peril for which catastrophe models have had the most success. The integration of the output of catastrophe crop models with a food security vulnerability assessment model is described next. Recent advances in analytical modeling of various types of shocks in assessing food security are described but the operational use of these analytical models in the development of food security assessment for risk transfer is seen to be limited for now because of the complexity of these analytical models. The food security vulnerability modeling in the African Risk Capacity, ARC, model is then described as showing a practical solution to the complex problem of assessing food security via a model. Lastly, the challenges faced in risk transfer of sovereign food security risks are discussed.

The report Africa Can Help Feed Africa (World Bank 2012) showed that increasing food staples1 supply can be met by better connecting African markets to each other. That report called for a stronger focus on removing trade barriers and building on the forces of regional integration. This report builds on the lessons of Africa Can Help Feed Africa by looking into the specific circum¬stances met in West Africa, home to one-third of the continent’s population and to some of its most vulnerable countries. Staple foods are the main source of calories in Africa and in West Africa. In that region, rice, followed by maize and cassava, provides the main source of calories in coastal countries, with millet and sorghum being an important source of food in Sahelian countries (Haggblade et al. 2012). The challenge of food supply is particularly acute in West Africa with some of the world’s fastest growing populations, including urban populations. West Africa’s 2011 population of 342 million is expected to increase to 516 million by 2030 and to 815 million by 2050 (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division 2013); in this time frame, the region’s urban population will grow from 44 percent to 63 percent of the total population (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division 2014). As this report will show, strong reasons exist to bring a more strategic focus on promoting regional trade. The first compelling reason is that there is already a sizeable amount of trade in the region, revealing existing important complementarities between countries in the ECOWAS space. Because a large share of this trade is informal, this reality is not always well taken into account. A second reason is that developing these complementarities by facilitating trade and creating the regional soft and hard infra¬structure to incite cross-border flows would further enable (a) the exploitation of comparative advan¬tages and economies of scale in the region; (b) access to and diffusion of better production technologies; (c) competitive access to inputs, research, and extension services; and (d) improved security in the face of shocks that lead to food crises. Finally, a third reason is that existing national policies that affect trade are, by and large, inefficient and incoherent at the regional level; therefore a better use of policy making and institutions is needed to achieve food policy objectives.

Between 2008 and 2012 the urban/rural poverty divide substantially narrowed down, which was the result of relatively stable rural and rising urban poverty rates. Over the same period, food inflation spiked, whereby strong links between domestic and global price movements were observed owed to major import dependence on food. The high shares of consumption that households dedicate to food, especially among the poor, leave limited scope to deal with food price surges by economizing on non-food expenditure. Food price increases of 5, 10, and 15 percent are estimated to increase poverty rates between 2 and 5 percentage points in the baseline scenario.

This report provides an analysis of food security in Moldova. It attempts to outline the specific characteristics of food insecurity found in Moldova and to identify its underlying causes. This report provides a basis on which sound public policy can be built. The understanding of food security as a concept has evolved in Moldova over time, but policy has remained focused on food availability as the primary attribute of food security. The report looks at how many people are food insecure in Moldova, where these people live, who they are, and why they face food security challenges. The report adopts the international food security concept and analytical framework based on the four key dimensions: (i) the availability of food; (ii) access to food; (iii) utilization of food; and (iv) the stability of these three dimensions over time. The report is divided into following parts. The part one outlines the methodology used and provides a brief overview of Moldovas agriculture sector. In part two the report focuses on overall food security outcomes by assessing how many people are food insecure in Moldova, where do they live, who they are, and when is food security most affecting them. Part three provides a comprehensive analysis of the four dimensions of food security (availability, access, utilization, and stability) and identifies bottlenecks. Part four introduces the institutional actors and the policy framework. The report concludes with policy recommendations.

Since Liberia’s Ebola virus disease (EVD) epidemic began in March 2014, nearly 10,000 persons have contracted the virus and more than 4,000 have died. The economic impact of Ebola survey is a high frequency cell phone survey designed to monitor the socio-economic impacts of the EVD crisis in Liberia. The survey has been conducted in five rounds from October 2014 to March 2015. The sample is based on the nationally representative household income and expenditure survey (HIES) implemented from February to August 2014 by the Liberia institute of statistics and geo-information services (LISGIS). The report presents an update of the epidemiological situation in Liberia and associated response efforts at the time of the fifth round of data collection (March 12-18, 2015). It gives an updates on the employment, prices, food security, coping strategies, health, and education indicators surveyed.

This report presents an assessment of school feeding policies and institutions that affect young children in Benin. The analysis is based on a World Bank tool developed as part of the systems approach for better education results (SABER) initiative that aims to systematically assess education systems against evidence based global standards and good practice to assist countries reform their education systems for proper learning for all. SABER school feeding collects, analyzes, and disseminates comprehensive information on school feeding policies around the world. The overall objective of the initiative is to help countries design effective policies to improve their education systems facilitate comparative policy analysis, identify key areas to focus investment, and assist in disseminating good practice.

South Sudan is a fragile country beset by conflicts. The oil shutdown accompanied by a border closure in 2012 was resolved, but ongoing military clashes between factions of the ruling party have affected livelihoods since December 2013. Before the onset of these conflicts, large parts of the population were food insecure (2 out of 3 people) and lived in poverty (1 out of 2 people). This note estimates and juxtaposes the impact of the oil shutdown and the ongoing military conflict on livelihoods based on food price changes, predicted harvest losses and displacement. The resulting poverty estimates help to understand the structural implications of these conflicts. But to validate these numbers, test the underlying modeling assumptions and inform a policy response, new data needs to be collected urgently.

Africa's growing demand for food has been met increasingly by imports from the global market. This, coupled with rising global food prices, brings ever-mounting food import bills. In addition, population growth and changing demand patterns will double demands over the next 10 years. Two key issues must be addressed: (a) establishing a consistent and stable policy environment for regional trade in fertilizers; and (b) investing in institutions that reduce the transaction costs of coordination failures. Many countries have enacted new fertilizer laws in recent years, but few have provided the resources to define and enforce regulations through standards and testing capacity. This report shows that reducing regulatory burdens on fertilizers and the consequent increase in use of fertilizers will have substantial impacts on returns to farmers, with consequent impacts on poverty. The report highlights the range of barriers to food trade in Africa along the entire value chain. The issues pertain to many ministries and agencies within government: trade, agricultural, health and safety, transport, and finance. This in turn requires a "whole of government' approach to freeing up food trade, which will require strong and effective leadership to articulate the rationale and sustain the momentum for reform. Leaders must also address the hard choices that will arise in dealing with the political economy constraints that have until now blocked the capacity of Africa to exploit its enormous potential to feed Africans.

Afghanistan faces a severe problem of poor nutrition and food insecurity. Chronic malnutrition among Afghan children is one of the highest in the world. This report investigates the status of food insecurity in Afghanistan with a focus on mapping provincial differences and an emphasis on understanding the impact of rising food prices on key measures of food security. It synthesizes findings from analysis of rising food prices and their impact on different measures of food access and utilization (such as calorie intake, protein consumption and the quality of diet) in Afghanistan. The findings are based on the analysis of data from the National Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (NRVA) 2007/08, a sample of over 20,000 households from all 34 provinces of Afghanistan. This analytical work is an integral part of the on-going collaboration between the Government of Afghanistan and the World Bank in the domain of poverty and vulnerability assessment. It aims to further the understanding of household wellbeing and vulnerability from the standpoint of food security and complements the earlier work presented in 'poverty status in Afghanistan. Finally, given that poor nutrition and food insecurity affect a sizeable proportion of the Afghan population year-round but more so during bad times, there is genuine need for a scaled-up and well-targeted safety nets program in Afghanistan.

After almost a year of political, economic, and security upheaval, Yemen has now embarked on a new political path based on an agreement brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and overseen by the United Nations, or UN and the international community. The agreement was signed on November 23, 2011, after former President Saleh, the ruling party (GPC), and the opposition parties agreed to a political transition, dialogue, and political reforms. A transitional government of national unity was formed and confirmed by the Parliament in early December 2011. The transition President Hadi was elected on February, 21 2012, for the period spanning to the planned next general elections in the first half of 2014. In an environment of political tensions, the President made progress in reforming the security institutional set-up, in reducing the influence of Al-Qaeda forces, and in preparing for a national dialogue.

This paper reviews a small community-based school feeding program launched in Togo in response to the 2007/08 food price crisis. The discussion focuses on the operational and policy lessons emerging from the program, to better understand opportunities for scale up and sustainability in the future. A focus of the discussion is how to build safety nets in fragile states and in situations where there is weak and fragmented government capacity to deliver services to disadvantaged and vulnerable communities. In this context school feeding is explored as an entry point through the use of informal mechanisms based on the commitment of communities and civil society. The analysis is premised on quantitative and qualitative analysis carried out at program sites. The discussion identifies the operational challenges and opportunities in customizing school feeding within Togo with an emphasis on targeting, cost effectiveness, procurement and institutional aspects. Evidence on the economic and social benefits of the program is also presented, focusing on dietary impacts, as well as household and local community effects. The objective of the discussion is to share lessons learned from evaluation findings so that they can be useful for implementing similar programs in the future in Togo itself or in other countries. Findings from the analysis highlight the possibilities of implementing school feeding in a low capacity setting and the scope for using the program as a springboard towards a broader and more comprehensive social safety net.

The approach taken in this report reflects the view of the collaborating international organizations that price volatility and its effects on food security is a complex issue with many dimensions, agricultural and non-agricultural, short and long-term, with highly differentiated impacts on consumers and producers in developed and developing countries. The report begins with a discussion of volatility and of the ways in which volatility affects countries, businesses, consumers and farmers. Lessons learned from recent experiences are briefly reviewed as well as the factors determining likely levels of volatility in future. This report offers suggestions for a systematic and internationally coordinated response building on the lessons learned as a result of the 2007-2008crisis. It is important to distinguish between policy options designed to prevent or reduce price volatility and those designed to mitigate its consequences. Both types of intervention are explored in detail. Scope is identified for actions at individual, national, regional and international level. Some would help to avert a threat; others are in the nature of contingency plans to improve readiness, while still others address long-term issues of resilience. Finally, the report explores mechanisms of international cooperation to implement this report's recommendations and to monitor progress.

This paper makes the case for why safety nets are an important tool for managing the risk of natural hazards. The use of safety nets is advocated both ex ante, to prevent and mitigate the impact of natural disaster and ex post, to cope with the impacts of natural shocks. Firstly, the paper explores the implications of contextual factors to be taken into account in the design of an effective safety net system to respond to the needs generated by natural disasters. Learning from the responses to a number of recent natural disasters, a typology of the different types of natural hazards which require different approaches to reduce their risk is introduced. Secondly, the paper considers some 'guidelines' for improving the design and implementation of safety nets either to prevent and/or to recover from natural disasters. Finally, some conclusions and recommendations for more effective safety net and suggestions for addressing key issues are outlined.

In Ethiopia, village surveys were conducted in six villages and two expert workshops were organized to discuss the organization of the study and to evaluate the draft results. Based on household surveys, focus group discussions, and institutional stakeholder interviews, we assessed household vulnerability, analyzed the strategies households adopt to reduce the hazards faced, and evaluated the assistance households receive from institutions. Vulnerability profiles were formulated, which show that household vulnerability differs substantially among and within villages. The size and diversity of income and the ability to flexibly decide on alternative measures to mitigate the adverse climate effects, which depends on, for example, level of education and dependency ratio, have effects on the adaptation options households adopt and the type of institutional assistance they receive. This report presents the results of the World Bank-funded project on Costing Adaptation through Local Institutions (CALI). The objectives of the CALI-project are: (1) to identify the costs of adaptation through local institutions, and (2) to investigate the institutions that support households in adapting to climate variability, the efforts and costs required to realize the adaptation options, and how they facilitate adaptation to climate variability. The study has been carried out in Ethiopia, Mali, and Yemen. This report discusses the results for Ethiopia.

This paper provides a synthetic overview of the link between food insecurity and conflict, addressing both traditional (civil and interstate war) and emerging (regime stability, violent rioting and communal conflict) threats to security and political stability. In addition, it addresses the various attempts by national governments, intergovernmental organizations, and civil society to address food insecurity and, in particular, the link with conflict. It begins with a discussion of the various effects of food insecurity for several types of conflict, and discusses the interactions among political, social, and demographic factors that may exacerbate these effects. It then discusses the capabilities of states, international markets, intergovernmental organizations, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to break the link between food security and conflict by focusing on mechanisms that can shield both food consumers and producers from short-term price instability. Finally, it discusses projected trends in both food insecurity and conflict and concludes with some brief comments on policies that can build resilience in light of projections of higher and volatile food prices and a changing climate.

World prices for staple foods increased between 2006 and 2008, and accelerated sharply in 2008. Initial analysis indicated that the adverse effects of higher food prices in Uganda were likely to be small because of the diversity of its staple foods, high level of food self-sufficiency, and weak links with world markets. This paper extends the previous analyses, disaggregating by regions and individual food items, using more recent price data, and estimating the impact on consumption poverty. The analysis finds that poor households in Uganda tend to be net buyers of food staples, and therefore suffer welfare losses when food prices increase. This is most pronounced in urban areas, but holds true for most rural households as well. The diversity of staple foods has not been an effective buffer because of price increases across a range of staple foods. The paper estimates that both the incidence and depth of poverty have increased -- at least in the short run -- as a result of higher food prices in 2008, increasing by 2.6 and 2.2 percentage points, respectively. The increase in poverty is highest in the Northern region, which is already the poorest in Uganda. The need for mitigating social protection measures appears to be greater than previously recognized. Not only are the negative impacts larger, but they are also much more widespread geographically. This suggests the need for continued close monitoring of the situation, including monitoring the adequacy of existing safety nets and feeding programs.

This joint working paper lays out a rationale and strategic framework for improving food security and managing food-price shocks in the Arab countries. The paper does not provide country specific policy and project recommendations. Such recommendations will follow from the country by country application of the framework, taking into account each country's political and cultural preferences, resource endowments, and risk tolerance. In 2007 and the first half of 2008, a sharp rise in agricultural commodity and food prices triggered grave concerns about food security, malnutrition and increased poverty throughout the world. While the threat of a prolonged food-price shock receded with falling energy and commodity prices and a weakening global economy in the second half of 2008, many factors underlying the volatility in food prices appear here to stay and will require careful management if the world is to avoid future food-price shocks. This paper suggests three critical strategies that, together, can serve as pillars to help offset future vulnerability to price shocks: a) strengthen safety nets, provide people with better access to family planning services, and promote education; b) enhance the food supply provided by domestic agriculture and improve rural livelihoods by addressing lagging productivity growth through increased investment in research and development; and c) reduce exposure to market volatility by improving supply chain efficiency and by more effectively using financial instruments to hedge risk.