Baseline Food Security Assessments
Introduction to Baseline and
Action-oriented Assessments
Learners’ Notes
Course: Baseline Food Security Assessments
Lesson 1: Introduction to Baseline and Action-oriented Assessments - Learner’s Notes
Table of contents
Learning objectives 2
Introduction 2
What is a Baseline Assessment? 3
Why is a Baseline Assessment needed? 4
What is an Action-oriented Assessment? 7
How is an Action-oriented Assessment used? 8
Differences between Baseline and Action-oriented Assessments 10
How are Baseline and Action-oriented Assessments related? 12
Resource Constraints 13
Assessing Capacity 15
Summary 16
If you want to know more... 17
Learning objectives
At the end of this lesson you will be able to:
• understand what baseline and action-oriented assessments are;
• identify differences in terms of purpose, scope and the use of information;
• be aware of how baselines and action-oriented assessments complement each other; and
• be aware of resources and capacity required for each type of assessment.
Introduction
Baseline and action-oriented assessments are investigations undertaken in order to better understand the food security status of a given population, under specific circumstances, at a particular point in time.
Overlooking these important assessment steps in conducting a food security activity could lead to inappropriate and ineffective decisions and actions.
This lesson illustrates what baseline and action-oriented assessments are and how they differ and complement each other.
What is a Baseline Assessment?
A baseline food security assessment is a comprehensive description of the food security status of a given population in a country or region at a specific point in time.
Baseline assessments might include one or several of the following components:
1. Characterization of how the populations live (description of their livelihoods).
Livelihoods are the various ways people adopt in order to make a living.
These will depend on a number of factors related to the surrounding environment:
• the natural/geo-physical environment in which they live, such as, weather and climate variability, mountains, valleys, forests, pastures, mineral resources, rivers and lakes, soil fertility…
• the availability and accessibility of infrastructures and services including roads, markets, health and education facilities, employment opportunities...
• the institutional settings, including the political, administrative and social contexts…
• the various farm and non-farm activities conducted and assets owned by individuals, including productive and non-productive assets (types of food and cash crops grown, livestock, land, houses, farm and transport equipment…). The identification of assets is useful to rank population groups according to wealth and socio-economic status.
2. Understanding the risks and hazards they are facing.
In conducting their daily lives, people are exposed to risks that can have potentially devastating impacts on their livelihoods.
Risks are “the probability of harmful consequences, or expected losses (deaths, injuries, property, livelihoods, economic activity disrupted or environment damaged) resulting from interactions between natural or human-induced hazards and vulnerable conditions”.
In a baseline assessment, the range of potential risks that can result in a food crisis or from the deterioration in people’s livelihoods should be identified.
3. Understanding their capacities to deal with risk.
Once the potential risks have been identified, a baseline assessment should analyse the capacity of the population to cope with and recover from the impact of these risks -- their resilience. In a risky environment, people have developed coping strategies and resilience in order to deal with the various hazards they face.
It is important to identify these mechanisms to determine:
- how successful they are in helping to overcome the immediate effect of different hazards;
- how sustainable they are to supporting people’s livelihoods and food security status in the medium to long term.
Baselines are conducted fairly infrequently, as people’s livelihoods typically change relatively slowly. For example, an assessment may be updated every five or more years, or whenever a dramatic change occurring in the country or region has impacted the baseline conditions (such as a natural disaster, changes in administrative divisions).
An initial baseline assessment should be representative of all the prevailing livelihood systems in the country in order to provide a comprehensive picture, taking into account the administrative and agro-ecological zones in the country. This comprehensive picture will help identify where the most vulnerable population groups are located, or “hot spots”.
Please note that given the high cost related to conducting a baseline assessment, subsequent updates might be limited to specific locations where risks of food insecurity are the highest.
Why is a Baseline Assessment needed?
Baseline assessments provide a reference point and rationale to guide various decision-making processes. A credible and reliable diagnosis of a food security situation can be used:
1. As a reference guide for understanding changes and trends.
2. To inform policies and programmes for long-term development and poverty/vulnerability reduction strategies.
3. To support programmes and projects for emergency preparedness and disaster mitigation.
Let’s consider each of these three main uses in more detail.
1. As a reference guide for understanding changes and trends.
Information provided through baseline assessments indicates the state of food security at a specific point in time for a specific population.
Repeating this type of assessment at another point in time helps identify changes and trends, i.e. improvement/deterioration in the food security status of a given population, as well as the explanatory factors. It also helps identify indicators that should be monitored on a regular basis.
Example: Monitoring the achievement of the MDGs
One use of baseline assessments is to monitor the progress of programmes towards achieving certain objectives, such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
One MDG is halving the number of people who live on a dollar a day or less by year 2015. Baseline assessment results can indicate whether the gap between what needs to be done to achieve the MDGs and what is actually being done is narrowing or widening.
2. To inform policies and programmes for long-term development and poverty/vulnerability reduction strategies.
Baseline assessments help to identify mechanisms and key constraints, challenges and opportunities towards achieving food security.
Analysing people’s livelihoods can help to develop more appropriate policies in order to strengthen the most sustainable coping strategies and increase populations’ resilience. In other words, baselines help to find ways of addressing various constraints that can feed into policies and programmes for long-term development.
Example: Identifying the causes of poverty and vulnerability.
In Zambia, a baseline assessment conducted by the World Bank helped identify the underlying causes of poverty and vulnerability, which included institutional, policy and structural factors as well as risk factors such as climate, health and animal-plant disease and price fluctuations.
The Zambia baseline assessment also highlighted how the coping strategies of the population had weakened over the years and identified ways of strengthening them that included improved policies and programmes.
3. To support programmes and projects for emergency preparedness and disaster mitigation.
Baseline assessments may help to understand the impacts of potential disasters to better plan for emergency preparedness. Having depicted a situation before the occurrence of a shock helps to better understand the potential magnitude of the problem, how people could cope with it, the possible level of performance of the institutions they can rely upon and what type of external assistance may be needed.
Baseline assessments can help identify where the chronically vulnerable populations are located and how they can be assisted, before shocks occur.
Example: Emergency preparedness
C-SAFE is a joint project of three non-governmental organizations that was implemented from 2002 to 2005 in Lesotho, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The main objectives of the project were to improve the nutritional status of vulnerable population groups, protect their productive assets and strengthen household and community resilience to current and future shocks.
For monitoring and evaluation purposes, a baseline survey was conducted at the beginning of the project, anticipating the need to measure outcomes from the actual interventions.
Objectives of the assessment:
The baseline had two main objectives:
(1) establish baseline values of livelihood indicators against which future measurements of goal-related changes could be made; and
(2) increase the understanding of livelihood security factors impacting the lives of rural households.
What is an Action-oriented Assessment?
An action-oriented assessment is used to address a specific issue or problem in order to come up with recommendations that could be immediately translated into actions to solve the identified problem or address the specific issue.
Action-oriented assessments are often triggered by a mid-term evaluation/the end of a project or programme or by a monitoring or early warning assessment that indicates the occurrence of a problem, shock or hazard and the need for more specific information in order to better respond to the prevailing situation.
Examples include:
• emergency needs assessments (i.e. the broad range of sectoral needs including food security assessments and food needs assessments)
• measuring the impact of a specific project or programme.
An action-oriented assessment can inform decision-makers on:
• whether or not to intervene
• the nature and scale of the intervention that is required
• prioritization and allocation of resources
• how effective the programme decisions have been.
The information obtained helps to justify the approach taken and measures the extent to which the predicted outcomes of the project/programme have been achieved.
This provides further justification and rationale for initiation of new projects or programmes, or their continuation, revision or termination.
Action-oriented assessments are part of the process of response/project design, implementation and evaluation.
Action-oriented assessments provide an understanding of the magnitude of the problem, how long it will last, who are the most vulnerable groups, and what is the best response in terms of what is needed, how much and for how long.
They should also help identify what would happen if no action was taken or if there was an inadequate response.
Example: Emergency assessment
OXFAM’s experience in Orissa, is an example of emergency assessment. Several villages were hit by cyclones and flood.
OXFAM conducted an emergency assessment in Orissa in order to determine what was the impact of the shock, which categories of people were the most affected, in which locations and why; and how to combine food and non-food aid interventions effectively and for how long.
This emergency assessment indicated immediate responses required to prevent acute malnutrition and loss of lives, as well as interventions to help rebuild livelihoods.
How is an Action-oriented Assessment used?
In the case of a project evaluation, the outcomes of the assessment can help fine-tune previous actions and lead to a new orientation of the project.
In the course of a project, an action-oriented assessment might be triggered either as a mid-term evaluation in order to check whether previous actions undertaken are producing the expected outcomes, or after the occurrence of a specific shock.
Example: Assessment conducted after the occurrence of a shock during an ongoing programme.
OXFAM had already started a pastoral development programme in 1994 following successive droughts in the Wajir district, in north-east Kenya.
After the 1999 drought and the declaration of emergency in the district, a multi-agency emergency food security assessment was conducted and the results were used by OXFAM to modify the actions undertaken in its pastoral development programme.
In a food security emergency assessment, problems might be related to lack of food availability, in the event of crop failure due to drought; or a lack of food access, in the event of market failure due to either skyrocketing prices or lack of supply by traders.
An action-oriented crop assessment may be required to assess the extent of the crop failures. A market assessment may be triggered by unusually high prices for the season or lack of commodities. In this case, the assessment aims to understand the causes of the shock and the impacts on the most vulnerable, and identifies ways of addressing the problem (including food aid, subsidized sales, etc.).
Results obtained from such action-oriented assessments contribute to decisions regarding mobilizing required financial, human and logistical resources, planning for appropriate interventions, and targeting effectively and efficiently.
These results can also be used as important advocacy tools in attracting government and donor attention to a specific problem and, subsequently, funds to support emergency relief.
Let’s consider the following example:
In 2005, the Government of Niger and UNICEF conducted an emergency nutritional survey in order to assess the magnitude of malnutrition and recent illness among young children.
The survey results indicated that among children aged 6-59 months, 15.3% had Global Acute Malnutrition and a greater mortality rate than the emergency threshold (2 deaths per 10,000 children per day); during the preceding two weeks, 72% had fever, and 49.1% had diarrhea. Among children aged 9-59 months, 33.7% had not been vaccinated for measles.
The outcome of the assessment was used to trigger an emergency response.
In fact, the example shows that nutrition assessments may be triggered by unusual high frequency of visits to health centers in a given area at a specific time of the year.
A nutrition assessment would strive to understand how dietary intake and anthropometric status of a population group or subgroup have evolved following a crisis. Results from nutrition assessments help identify appropriate measures to be undertaken including supplementary feeding, oral rehydration, clinical therapy, etc.
Differences between Baseline and Action-oriented Assessments
Let’s now focus on the differences between a baseline and an action-oriented assessment.
In terms of purpose, the differences are:
BASELINE ASSESSMENTS / ACTION-ORIENTED ASSESSMENTSBaseline assessments are a multi-purpose exercise with broad objectives. They help decision-makers have a better knowledge and appreciation of a given food security situation. They are focused more on informing medium- and longer-term development planning, programme and project design, monitoring and evaluation. They provide a reference point to compare situations during a crisis. / Action-oriented assessments are focused on analysing a problem and identifying what the outcomes and impacts are, in order to trigger a response or corrective action.
The difference in terms of scope is threefold, including: the range of issues involved, the timeframe and the geographical area of intervention.
BASELINE ASSESSMENTS / ACTION-ORIENTED ASSESSMENTSISSUES / A food security baseline assessment will look at a range of issues affecting the food security status of a given population in order to come up with a holistic picture and a comprehensive understanding of the prevailing situation. / An action-oriented assessment will focus on problem analysis in order to come up with specific recommendations calling for corrective and immediate actions.
TIMEFRAME / A baseline assessment might be used as a reference guide for at least four to five years if the prevailing situation is not subject to a dramatic change. / An action-oriented assessment is organized on an ad hoc basis, according to specific needs, and the information is particular to that point in time and usually becomes quickly outdated.
GEOGRAPHICAL / A baseline assessment intends to cover a more representative part of the country. / An action-oriented assessment is organized on an ad hoc basis, according to specific needs, and the information is particular to that point in time and usually becomes quickly outdated.
In terms of use of information, the difference between a baseline and an action-oriented assessment lies in: