Effective resilience building requires a sound understanding of risks and their impacts on agrifood systems, livelihoods, food security, and natural resources.

Through the Understanding Risks pillar, RP4 strengthens the evidence base needed for informed decision-making by supporting risk analysis, vulnerability assessments, early warning systems, and knowledge generation. The pillar promotes the collection, analysis, and dissemination of timely and reliable information to enable governments, development partners, humanitarian actors, and communities to anticipate risks, prioritize actions, and design evidence-based policies and programmes.

Main Actions

• Support countries to assess and monitor hazards, vulnerabilities and food security conditions affecting agrifood systems and rural livelihoods Strengthen multi-hazard early warning and risk information systems.
• Provide evidence and analysis to support early action and risk-informed decision-making.
• Enhance capacities for risk monitoring, forecasting, and information management.

Building resilience requires effective institutions, policies, coordination mechanisms, and governance systems that can anticipate, prevent, prepare for, and respond to risks. Through the Disaster Risk and Crisis Governance pillar, RP4 supports governments, regional organizations, and partners in strengthening the policy and institutional foundations necessary for disaster risk reduction and crisis management.

The pillar promotes integrated and risk-informed governance approaches that enhance coordination across sectors and stakeholders. It supports the development of regional and national strategies, policy frameworks, institutional arrangements, and partnerships that improve preparedness, strengthen accountability, and foster collaboration in managing risks affecting agriculture, food security, and rural livelihoods.

Main Actions

• Strengthen legal, policy, and institutional frameworks for disaster risk reduction and crisis management.
• Support risk-informed planning and investment in agriculture and rural development.
• Promote regional cooperation, coordination, and policy dialogue on resilience.
•  Strengthen institutional capacities for risk governance, including sector coordination arrangements for managing crises 

Reducing risk before disasters occur is a fundamental element of resilience building. Through this pillar, RP4 supports measures that reduce vulnerabilities and strengthen the capacity of agrifood systems, institutions, and communities to withstand shocks and stresses.

The pillar promotes sustainable agricultural practices, disaster risk reduction measures, climate-resilient approaches, and risk-informed investments that help safeguard livelihoods and food production. It also supports institutional mechanisms that help households and producers better manage risk, recover from shocks, and adapt to changing environmental and socioeconomic conditions.

Main Actions

• Promote resilient and sustainable agricultural and natural resource management practices.
• Reduce household and community vulnerabilities through disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation measures.
• Strengthen social protection, risk financing, and livelihood resilience mechanisms.
• Support access to technologies, innovations, and good practices that enhance resilience to future shocks.

The One Health approach is a coordinated, collaborative, multidisciplinary and cross-sectoral approach that recognizes the interconnected health of people, animals, plants and ecosystems. Given the transboundary nature of zoonotic diseases, animal diseases, antimicrobial resistance (AMR), food safety threats, plant pests and diseases, and environmental risks, effective implementation requires strong regional cooperation, multisectoral governance, integrated surveillance, risk assessment, preparedness and response mechanisms.

Plant health constitutes an important component of One Health, as the prevention and sustainable management of plant pests and diseases contribute directly to food security, safe food production, livelihoods, biodiversity and ecosystem health, while reducing risks associated with inappropriate pesticide use.

The action area will build on the Regional One Health Coordination Mechanism, including the Regional One Health Coordination Group (OHCG), national and regional One Health focal point networks, and thematic Regional Technical Working Groups (TWGs), to promote coordination, technical cooperation and knowledge exchange across the region.

Science, technology and innovation play important roles in strengthening surveillance, early warning, information sharing, laboratory networking and evidence-based decision-making for prevention and control of biological threats.

Main actions

• Support regional collaboration on transboundary pests and diseases, zoonotic diseases, AMR and food safety threats, including through regional One Health coordination mechanisms, focal point networks and Technical Working Groups.
• Support countries in developing and implementing One Health strategies, action plans, platforms and governance mechanisms aligned with regional and global frameworks and ensuring appropriate consideration of human, animal, plant and environmental health.
• Strengthen integrated and complementary surveillance, monitoring, early warning systems, information sharing, joint and sector- specific risk assessment and preparedness capacities for biological threats including emerging and transboundary plant pests and diseases. 
• Support research, knowledge exchange and technical cooperation on emerging and re-emerging biological threats and on the interaction among human, animal, plant and ecosystems health, including those influenced by climate change.
• Support implementation of biosecurity, phytosanitary and quarantine measures, pest and disease risk analysis, contingency planning, and emergency preparedness to prevent the introduction and spread of transboundary animal diseases and plant pests and diseases.
• Support countries in strengthening food safety systems, laboratory and diagnostic capacities and risk-based approaches within the broader One Health framework, including risks associated with pesticide residues and mycotoxins.
• Support implementation of AMR action plans through surveillance, antimicrobial stewardship, awareness-raising and multisectoral collaboration.
• Support implementation of the NENA Plant Health Strategy 2025–2035 as a regional framework for strengthening plant biosecurity, surveillance and early warning, sustainable and climate-responsive pest and pesticide management, phytosanitary capacities and regional cooperation, contributing to resilient agrifood systems and the broader One Health approach.
• Strengthen One Health workforce capacities through training, simulation exercises, expert networks and regional knowledge-sharing platforms, including enhanced collaboration among relevant ministries, National Plant Protection Organizations, veterinary and public health authorities, food safety institutions, research organizations and environmental agencies.

Despite investments in risk reduction and resilience, emergencies continue to affect many countries in the NENA region. Through the Emergency Preparedness and Response pillar, RP4 supports FAO country offices and national partners in preparing for, responding to, and recovering from crises affecting agrifood systems and rural livelihoods.

The pillar focuses on enhancing emergency readiness, improving the quality and effectiveness of emergency interventions, strengthening operational capacities, and supporting strategic planning and resource mobilization. Its objective is to ensure that agricultural and food security concerns are effectively integrated into humanitarian responses while supporting pathways from relief to recovery and long-term resilience.

Main Actions

• Strengthen emergency preparedness, contingency planning, and response capacities.
• Support early action, and emergency programme design and delivery.
• Protect and restore agricultural livelihoods affected by disasters and crises.
• Support strategic planning, resource mobilization, and the positioning of agriculture within humanitarian response
• Promote integrated recovery and resilience approaches through the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus.

Cross-cutting priorities are essential for strengthening the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability and impact of emergency and resilience programming across the NENA region. By mainstreaming gender equality, conflict-sensitive programming, protection from sexual exploitation and abuse, accountability to affected populations, knowledge management and behavioural science, FAO supports countries to design and implement emergency and resilience interventions that are inclusive, safe, contextually informed, evidence-based and accountable to the people and communities they serve.

Main actions under this strategic action area include:

• Support the region in mainstreaming gender equality, inclusion, conflict sensitivity, accountability to affected populations, protection from sexual exploitation and abuse, and localization in programme frameworks, project cycle processes, operational guidance and monitoring systems;
• Strengthen country capacities to apply these cross-cutting priorities in day-to-day interventions and across the project cycle, including through context/ conflict and gender analysis, conflict-sensitive and peace-responsive programming, safe and accountable community engagement, and the use of best-practices to adapt interventions.
• Generate and develop an evidence-based approach to support resilience to multiple and overlapping shocks affecting women, men, youth, displaced populations and vulnerable groups differently, in order to inform advocacy, policy dialogue, resource mobilization and resilience programming; 
• Promote regional knowledge management, peer learning and capitalization of good practices through knowledge platforms, communities of practice, technical briefs, webinars, repositories and resilience learning products;
• Explore the application of behavioural science to resilience programming and policies in fragile and conflict-affected agricultural contexts, including how farmers, rural communities, service providers and institutions perceive risk, make decisions, respond to shocks, and engage with support services;
• Strengthen the quality of FAO resilience programming through tools, guidance notes, manuals and technical papers that help country offices assess, adapt and monitor their work from a conflict-sensitive, gender-responsive, accountable and protection-centered perspective.