In Search of the Resilient Sahelian : Reflections on a Fashionable Notion
These failures , as demonstrated by the regular recurrence of food crises , subsequently presented a challenge to a narrow conception of food insecurity that saw hunger as primarily the result of insufficient food production , and ignored the fact that hunger is also due to “ abnormal ” variations in price , insufficient means of production , and problems accessing food , as revealed in the work of Amartv Sen ( 1981 ). They also highlighted the need to look beyond the usual “ emergency / development ” divide to address the structural causes of food vulnerability and not simply its cyclical occurrences ( Pingali , Alinovi , and Sutton 2005 ).
Added to these considerations are financial arguments . Set against a background of shrinking public budgets , the “ right ” hunger prevention model is the one that now gives priority to increasing value for money . Resilience , which by definition is based on the local agency and on preventive rather than responsive action , therefore finds increasing favor . The efficiency argument is also used as part of efforts to improve coordination between aid actors , not simply between emergency and development , but also between the technical response sectors , such as food security , water sanitation and hygiene ( WASH ) and health , and between actors operating in the same territory , and so on . Integration has become the new Discourse on humanitarian Method , which included skills , timeframes , scales of analysis and action , and the usual funding categories — poverty re-
4 Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters . 129
duction , climate adaptation , and disaster risk reduction . Resilience as the purpose , integration as the method , and value for money as the common constraint , are the new triptych of the aid sector in the 2010s .
Since resilience is conceived as a tool for the integrated action on humanity ’ s various ills , the world regions where these ills are most highly concentrated represent priority areas for experimenting resilience policies and programs . They include vulnerable coastal areas of South Asia , Horn of Africa countries , and the Sahelian fringe of Sub-Saharan Africa . This Sahelian fringe has to cope with climate change local consequences , still high rates of poverty and food insecurity , political instability , adverse incorporation in world markets , etc . In West Africa , resilience is therefore central to multiple initiatives , European ( AGIR ), British ( BRACED 4 ), American ( Global Partnership ), and sub-regional ( Zero Hunger ). In the Sahel as a whole , it would be unrealistic to apply for funding without including resilience in the “ concept note ”, or without asserting an aspiration to Sahelian resilience . This resilience has become a new conditionality , after many others in History of the aid sector in the Sahel ( modernization , structural adjustment , governance , pro poor growth , etc .).
This paper explores the scope of this new requirement for the projects and policies implemented in the Sahelian sub-region . The first section focuses on the usefulness of this notion in analyzing Sahelian contexts . The