Best Practice – Lessons learned

Syria, Rural Damascus, December 2021

Introduction

The Near East and North Africa (NENA) region is confronted with serious challenges that exacerbate fragility and threaten resilience, food security, and nutrition in the region. These include conflicts, slow and rapid onset disasters, and degradation of already scarce natural resources, which are further aggravated by inappropriate policies and high population growth in a changing climate.

More than 50 percent of people affected by ‘natural’ disasters during the period 2005 – 2009 lived in fragile and conflict-affected states. Food insecurity and malnutrition are prevalent in fragile and conflict-affected communities in the region. The compounded effect of conflict and the increase of various natural hazards in recent years has led to a significant increase in the number of hungry people in countries affected by conflicts globally and particularly in the NENA region.  This may further force food insecure communities towards advanced stages of hunger and food deprivation. For example, in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, slow and rapid onset disasters such as flash floods, forest fires, and droughts, have already pushed conflict-affected people beyond their ability to cope leading to additional stresses for vulnerable communities, especially those affected by conflict.

Key Facts

Location: Rural Damascus

Multi stakeholders: The Federation Syria of Chambers of Agriculture (FSCA), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

Donor: State of Japan

Target Group: 150 male and female trainees targeted in 3 villages 

Challenge

In Syria, the 8-year Syrian crisis continues to drive humanitarian and emergency needs higher. The main driver of food insecurity continues to be population displacement, with 6.5 million people food insecure, 6.1 million internally displaced, and 5.4 million refugees.

Furthermore, to the conflict, Syria’s wheat crop in 2018 was the smallest in the past three decades due to war (shortage of input) and drought, reducing production further by around 30 percent.

The affected communities and areas were classified in Damascus Countryside Governorate, and the research area (Harran Al-Awamid) was identified as one of the most vulnerable and affected by risks of natural disasters and conflict. As the area is located in the fourth agroecological zone and was affected by the crisis plus the impact of drought is more severe to the livelihood and production in this area.

Combined with the impact of drought, communities are required to cope with far more complexity in their conflict-affected context. There are therefore missing actions to prevent, mitigate and reduce the impacts of disasters, which exacerbate already existing threats to a large ‘at-risk’ population, due to food insecurity and malnutrition in the fragile and conflict-affected communities

Project objectives

Evidence shows that the negative impact of natural disasters on food security and nutrition is further aggravated in countries affected by conflict. Therefore, the project “Towards Risk-informed Response to Natural Disasters in Conflict-affected Communities” is focusing on addressing the challenges of losing lives and resources during the flood and working on building up disaster risk reduction (DRR) practices for the local population. The project is addressing the challenges by targeting the local communities in the most affected areas by drought through focusing on providing fodder for their livestock that is drought-tolerant which is cactus. 

Methodological approach

The project provided training for targeted farmers to cut cactus leaves and prepare them as livestock feed as a start then providing farmers with cactus leaves to feed their animals as part of the training activity. In addition, the project did secure a slicing machine for cactus leaves, which will be placed at the extension unit to serve the whole community.

The other part of the project is the capacity building for monitoring and early warning. The international consultants specializing in DRR, monitoring, and early warning systems have provided basic concepts of monitoring and early warning and that is a great addition to the local population.  The project does not only provide short-term solutions that normally are provided during conflicts, but also long-term solutions to enhance the capacities of the population to integrate their disaster risk management.

In addition, initial training was provided for 10 technicians at the district and sub-district levels on the basic concepts of the monitoring and early warning system for disaster risks, communication, and coordination with the local community for disaster risk management. Finally, another training was provided for 15 beneficiaries of the local community to be drivers of their communities in the field of monitoring, early warning, and response to disaster risks.

Impact

In June 2021, with the participation of the Monitoring and Evaluation Unit in FAO Syria, the Learning on DRR Assessment was discussed with the monitoring and evaluation international consultant, and then a report on Learning on DRR Assessment in Syria was prepared and submitted to the project team in FAO’s Regional Office for the Near East and North Africa.

The findings were found very promising for both practices, cactus growing and capacity training, and the impact was found to be positive. For cactus growing, we find that this diversity of fodder for livestock resources is increasing the wellness and prosperity of the local population in the targeted area by reducing the major risk of drought on livestock, which is one of the main sources of income for local communities.

We found also that the project has improved the disaster risk management system for local populations in the targeted areas. In addition, other stakeholders’ especially local governments have become more cooperative especially since conflict led to an increase in the destruction of infrastructure and the loss of savings and productive assets for households and communities, and it became more weak and vulnerable to the natural disasters risks. One more positive element is the increasing role of government involvement as the Federation Syria of Chambers of Agriculture (FSCA), which is the implementing partner of the project, has been involved in the project by conducting capacity building for 50 farmers and 5 technical staff on the management of cactus, preparation, and use as fodder to improve livestock nutrition.

Sustainability

The project improved the methodology for collecting and transferring field data, training the project technicians to conduct in-depth analyzes of the available data, preparing response plans to natural hazards, and preparing periodic and occasional valuable and useful reports for farmers and decision-makers.

In addition, the project is providing an economically friendly solution that is green and sustainable for framers and increased the ties between community members through training that affects the heart and mind of the population through modern, out-of-the-box, and sustainable resilience techniques that will contribute positively to the population.

In addition, now that participants are trained on the basics of monitoring, animal health will be better monitored and future outbreaks and the resulting losses can be managed in a timely manner.

Replicability and upscaling

The project has taken into consideration the diversity of agro-ecological zones when copying the intervention to other drought-affected regions, which means that it can be replicated in many other regions that face the same risk, which is drought.

Replicating the project is very possible since it does not require great financial resources, difficult techniques, and access to services. The project will have minimal or no potential negative environmental and social impacts and does not foresee having controversial interests from stakeholders. The project risks are widely known and several lessons and measures are available to address potential impacts on the project.