Shukri Ahmed, Deputy Strategic programme Leader, Resilience – FAO 

People who rely on farming, livestock, forests or fishing for their food and income, around one-third of the world’s population, are among the most vulnerable and affected by natural hazards and human-induced crises, from droughts, floods, earthquakes and disease epidemics to conflict, market shocks and complex protracted crises. When we talk about resilience, we are referring to the ability of people and communities to prevent the impacts disasters and crises as well as to anticipate, absorb, and recover from them in a timely, efficient and sustainable manner. This includes protecting, restoring and improving livelihoods systems in the face of threats that impact agriculture, nutrition, food security and food safety. 

Interventions by FAO, as a specialized technical agency, and other humanitarian and development organizations that strengthen resilience cover a wide scope of sectors and approaches at individual, community and institutional levels. Some of these interventions focus on a specific aspect of building resilience, for example floods or animal diseases. FAO colleagues from different technical divisions will share their experiences throughout this online forum. 

The wide scope of interventions in the field of resilience could benefit significantly from more interlinkages. Increased coordination and increased exchange of experiences will be necessary to tackle these global problems in a more integrated way. 

This forum offers us the opportunity to look into different experiences on the use of ICTs for resilience. Indeed, we see that ICTs play a key role in our resilience building programmes and projects. Early warning systems, timely availability of agro-inputs using e-vouchers, credit supply by mobile money transactions, mobile applications to signal animal disease outbreaks and centralized information centers to handle pest control data are all examples of how ICTs are valuable in supporting our collective work to build the resilience of the most vulnerable and at risk. 

Interesting initiatives such as Abalobi, developing applications to empower fishermen and that are in line with the Small Scale Fisheries Voluntary Guidelines is a good example of ICTs for development working in the context of global policies and guidelines to increase efficiency. Other examples include the World Bank’s CAPI (computer assisted Personal Interviews) technology developed to assist governments, statistical offices and non-governmental organizations in conducting complex surveys with dynamic structures using tablet devices. 

This forum is an opportunity to share information and capitalize on our experiences, think about how different systems and tools can be linked, and to better understand how ICTs can better support our collective endeavor in building/strengthening resilience. 

I am looking forward to reading your thoughts about the topic, learning from your experiences, sharing our knowledge, and reflecting on next steps, including framing recommendations on the use of ICTs for resilience for decision and policy makers.