LA GESTIÓN DE RIESGOS EN EL CONTEXTO GLOBAL

Though the literature on coping has mainly addressed food security, particularly in the context of drought, seasonality and famine (Trærup, 2010), Devereux (1993: 52) argues that Sen’s (1981) ‘entitlement approach’ to poverty and famine analysis offers no solution for enquiries about household responses. However, ‘coping’ is considered as a response to an immediate and non-habitual decline in access to food (Davies, 1996) and as a means of averting immediate livelihood threats (Berry, 1989; Devereux, 2001; Ellis, 1998, 2000; Huq and Reid, 2004; Vogel, 1998). Adger (2000: 357) describes coping strategies as “short-term adjustments and adaptations to extreme events, [which] are usually involuntary and almost invariably lead to a different subsequent state of vulnerability.” Based on the household’s resilience and

sensitivity (see, Bayliss-Smith, 1991)76, Davies (1996) argued that in a vulnerable livelihood

system (low resilience and high sensitivity) households are more likely to pursue adaptive strategies, seeking to use all available options at all times. Thus, coping strategies may develop into adaptive strategies through time (Berkes and Jolly, 2001) when they are used every year, for example, when transitory food insecurity becomes chronic (Davies, 1996: 55). Here, coping strategies are viewed as adaptive strategies in seasonal adjustments and coping represents a normal component in the lives of subsistence households in developing countries (Trærup, 2010). Adaptation strategies thus often measure means of reducing sensitivity and the

need for coping (Siri et al., 2005). But Trærup (2010) argues that coping under this lens makes

it difficult to distinguish between situations in which households are coping and situations in which their responses are normal behaviour. However, by fuelling up coping and adapting

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Bayliss-Smith draws on Blaikie and Brookfield’s (1987) analysis of the sustainability of agricultural ecosystems in distinguishing between these characteristics. Here, highly resilient systems have the capacity to bounce back to a normal state after a food crisis, contingent upon having coping strategies which are reserved for the periods of unusual stress. The sensitivity of a livelihood system refers to the intensity with which the shock is experienced: in highly sensitive systems coping strategies are not available to cushion the shock. Further, the greater the sensitivity, the further the system will need to bounce back; consequently, there is a vicious cycle between increasing sensitivity, declining resilience and an inability to bounce back (Davies, 1993).

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strategies into livelihood security, Devereux (1999) states that poor households everywhere survive by pursuing a mix of livelihood strategies: these are ‘accumulation’ strategies (seeking to increase their income flows and stocks of assets); ‘adaptive strategies’ (to spread risk through livelihood adjustments or income diversification); ‘coping’ strategies (to minimise the impacts of livelihood shocks) and, ‘survival’ strategies (in extremes, to prevent destitution and death). Thus, households adopt different adaptive strategies which are involved in response to a gradually deteriorating food security situation, for example, seasonality which is predictable in its cyclical occurrence but not in its severity; whilst coping – and in extremes cases, survival strategies – are responses to sudden shocks or threat, for example unpredictable events such as a flood or rapid price inflation. Further, regular shocks like seasonality are somewhere between these two: since seasonality is predictable, households develop adaptive mechanisms, but coping strategies might be needed if a particular seasonality is unusually severe and further if more severe, households choose survival strategies. Table 7.1 summarises the role of different strategies adopted by the households in a vulnerable livelihood system for coping with food insecurity and hunger.

Table 7.1: Role of coping strategies in vulnerable livelihood system.

Vulnerable system (Low resilience/high sensitivity) Normal situation

1. Production Often need change to forms of agriculture that increase resilience and reduce the need for coping

2. Claim Reciprocal links under increasing strain 3. Accumulation

Severe situation

Secondary activities essential to meet food deficit (no buffer) Coping strategies used when (1) and (2) fail to meet food needs, in part of every year (no 1st or 2nd buffer)

Over time, coping strategies become part of secondary activities (3), i.e. adaptive strategies

4. Coping Genuine coping strategies reserved for hunger

Coping strategies become fewer and fewer - i.e. Survival strategies

Source: Modified after Davies, 1996 and Devereux, 1999.

Several qualitative studies of famine in South Asia and Africa have reported a common pattern in the nature and sequence of coping and survival strategies adopted by the rural vulnerable people facing a food crisis (see, Chen, 1991; Corbett, 1988; Devereux, 1993; Mardiharini,

2005, Norhasmah, et al., 2010; Radimer et al., 1992; Radimer, Olson and Campbell, 1990).

Corbett (1988) summarised these studies and generalised a pattern of three stages, reflecting increasing desperation: insurance mechanisms (e.g. savings), disposal of productive assets (e.g. sale of advance labour) and destitution behaviour (e.g. distress migration). One mode of

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conceptualising this process is ‘sequencing approach’ strategies that have little long-run adoption at first, then strategies with higher long-run costs that are difficult to reverse, and finally survival strategies that reflect economic destitution and failure to cope (Campbell and Trechter 1982: 2121). Another way of looking at this distinction is as a choice between erosive and non-erosive behaviour (de Waal, 1989): some strategies that are employed to cope with the seasonal crisis without any threat for losing well-being in future are ‘non-erosive’, and strategies that deplete the household asset base and thereby undermine its future viability are ‘erosive’ (Devereux, 1999). However, there have been reactions against a strictly sequential approach in conceptualising household food strategies (Amare, 1995). Devereux (1993) and Majake (2005) argue that households do not always apply coping strategies in a one dimensional sequence as earlier literature suggested; rather, coping strategies are adopted in multiple and iterative layers; several discrete strategies are adopted simultaneously.

Watts (1983: 259), one of the proponents of the structural–political economy approach, claims that people affected by food insecurity and hunger respond in different ways, depending on their economic position, as well as the social and political linkages involved (Zaman, 1989: 198). The World Bank (WDR, 2000/01) classifies the coping strategies according to whether they involve formal insurance mechanisms or informal arrangements (Figure7.1).

Figure 7.1: Networks which the household constructs in pursuit of coping strategies.

Source: Based on Adams (1996).

Informal strategies are developed at the individual and household level, and in non-market transfers. Based on kinship, friendship and patronage, this moral economy mediates the flow of non-market claims and transfers in a variety of forms ranging from cereal gifts to migrant remittances and labour exchange (Adams, 1993: 41). On the other hand, formal mechanisms may be market-based or provided by governments/NGOs. Cross cultural literature suggests

State Friends/ Neighbour Village welfare Kin NGOs Urban kin VILLAGE BEYOND Local Government Household

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that irrespective of level of development, the national government generally assumes responsibility for minimizing hardships by organizing relief work, providing loans and grants, and generating employment for food insecure people and hazard victims (Paul, 1998; Jodha, 1991). Local and national NGOs may also provide support for attempts to cope with food insecurity. But their actions are mainly adaptive in nature and rooted to the structural changes in livelihood strategies. However, in many developing countries, it has been claimed that formal credit and insurance markets are less developed and asset poor households face

constraints in access to these institutions (Watts, 1983; Blaikie et al., 1994; Modena, 2008).

The literature on coping strategies discussed above has mainly emerged out of a concern to understand particularly how rural people survive during drought-induced famines and seasonality (Devereux, 1999). As the Monga situation is less severe than for famine and the food insecurity at household level is not a question of food availability, I argue that the general principle and pattern that the coping strategies literatures highlight are centrally relevant to the Monga-prone areas. Elsewhere research suggests that coping strategies vary between different subsistence societies but the general sequence of adoption of progressively desperate strategies

is common (Majake, 2005; Maxwell et al., 2003; Corbett, 1988; Watt, 1983). Is summary, I

would say that the ability in coping with hunger is contingent upon people’s capacity to adopt (Davies, 1993) and draw upon the sources of support presented in Figure 7.1, on the basis that the less the involvement with the supporting sources, the greater is the risk of low returns in livelihood outcomes, and all strategies are characterised as a continuum, rather than as discrete categories (Devereux, 1999).