Side Event 6

Multi-sector and multi-hazard risk monitoring systems for Agriculture, Food Security and Nutrition

Main session objectives:

The session of “Multi-sector and multi-hazard risk monitoring systems for Agriculture, Food Security and Nutrition” will bring together stakeholders across levels and sectors to highlight the contributions of risks monitoring systems towards building resilient and sustainable agriculture and food systems, and will:

• Introduce which innovative tools are being implemented including key components: disaster risk prioritization, risk/vulnerability analysis and early warning systems including early warning and early action (EWEA) tools;
• Showcase how these tools contribute to build resilience of vulnerable communities and food systems most at risk, including the coordination channels for exchange of information and bulletins, that can enhance preventive and risk reduction actions and also contribute to assessing the impact of hazards, and the later response-recovery.
• Present key lessons learned and challenges in setting up this monitoring system and highlight their role in resilience building including disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) efforts as well as in humanitarian assistance.

Expected outcomes:

• Promote greater understanding of how these monitoring processes/tools help to identify people and livelihoods most at risk and promote preventive and risk reduction actions to strengthen resilience of agriculture and food systems;
• Showcase the building blocks of effective multi-hazard risk monitoring early warning systems for agriculture and food security, including understanding of where people at risk are located; the nature and degree of their exposure and vulnerabilities; their coping capacities and risk mitigation measures for single or multiple natural hazards;
• Share lessons learnt and challenges in scaling up and supporting national ownership of risk monitoring systems and promoting further investment to contribute to resilience building.

Key messages:

• Evidence shows that the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events is increasing. Climate-related disasters are occurring nearly five times as often compared to 40 years ago, with great costs to local economies, livelihoods and lives. Expanding needs and lack of information for decision making both at national and local level, mean that multi-hazard risk monitoring systems are needed to ensure smart, effective investments and decision-making to mitigate the impacts of extreme weather events, to avoid them from turning into disasters.
• Taking a multi-hazard risks approach is essential for developing resilient policies, programmes and generating good practices for scaling up actions, that contribute to enhance the resilience of agriculture, food security and nutrition (FSN). Many countries have existing monitoring mechanisms tracking climate trends, markets, livestock movements or plant and pest diseases; however, often they are operated in isolation and are not triangulated against each other or with other global trends in order to provide a stronger signal about an impending risk.
• Risk monitoring systems for Agriculture, Food Security and Nutrition should be multi-sectoral (including crop, livestock, forestry, fisheries/aquaculture and other related sectors such as water, environment and health), and multi-hazard; including natural hazards, prices and markets, conflict, food chain crises. They should also be context specific, in order to better inform both decision makers and agricultural smallholders on the necessary actions to be implemented.
• Risk monitoring systems must be coupled with timely alerts to trigger accurate decision-making at institutional and community levels. The EWEA mechanism enables governments and key stakeholders to identity triggers and when well-connected to existing early action protocols and operational mechanisms, enable governments, international organizations, civil societies and communities to act early and effectively mitigate the impact of disasters through a systematic use of early warning analysis and forecasts.
• Risk monitoring and early warning encompasses also food security and nutrition monitoring and assessments specifying information about people who are food insecure or at risk – who they are, where they are located, and why they are food insecure or vulnerable.
• Fully established, risk monitoring systems and EWEA can play a crucial role in contributing to build disaster resilience and support vulnerable communities to act before a disaster strikes. To ensure long term sustainability, it is crucial to have nationally owned systems and processes, with greater coherence across sectors and the required capacities in place across levels, allowing them to reach the most vulnerable population with actionable alerts and early actions, in order to “leave no one behind”.