Disaster Risk Reduction at Farm Level: Multiple Benefits, No Regrets: Results From Cost-Benefit Analyses Conducted in a Multi-Country Study, 2016-2018

Introduction

Currently 2.5 billion people worldwide depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. At the same time, agriculture is highly vulnerable to the impacts of recurrent disasters and other types of crises.

Over the last decade, the number of disasters caused by natural hazards has steadily increased, along with the number of people affected and the scale of economic losses generated – including in agriculture. A recent FAO study found that between 2006 and 2016, the agriculture sector absorbed approximately 23 percent of all damages and losses caused by natural hazard-induced disasters in developing countries (FAO, 2018). If not prevented, or significantly reduced or counteracted, these impacts will continue to have major negative implications for poverty and food security, worldwide (The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, 2018).

There are multiple pathways to reduce the impacts of natural hazard-induced disasters on the agriculture sector, at different levels – including farm level. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 establishes four lines of priority action that, together, can effectively address the risk of natural hazards: 1) understanding disaster risks; 2) strengthening disaster risk governance to manage risk; 3) investing in disaster risk reduction for resilience; and 4) enhancing disaster preparedness to enable building back better during recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction.

The third priority, which focuses on investment in disaster prevention and non-structural measures to enhance the economic, social and cultural resilience of communities, is the entry point for this study.

Investing in disaster risk reduction (DRR) measures at farm level is a crucial way to proactively reduce risk exposure at local level and enhance, from the bottom up, the resilience of farming families to natural hazards. Also, the fact that many DRR good practices add value to production even in non-disaster contexts provides an additional incentive to incorporate greater consideration of risks from natural hazards into existing agronomic and natural resources management practices on farms.

A key data gap, up to now, has been a lack of evidence regarding the amount of disaster-induced losses in agriculture that could be avoided by investing in preventive DRR good practices on farms.

The present study makes a significant contribution to answering this question, by analysing the benefits that improved farm-level DRR good practices offer farmers versus technologies and approaches they used in their fields previously.

This study developed and applied a systematic methodology to quantify, on a case-by-case basis, how much damage and loss can be reduced through the implementation of disaster risk reduction good practices at farm level.

This analysis is based on comprehensive data collected from ongoing and completed FAO field projects in multiple countries, in various world regions. The study developed and applied a systematic methodology to quantify, on a case-by-case basis, how much damage and loss can be reduced through the implementation of DRR good practices at farm level. Various types of hazards were considered (mainly floods, dry spells/drought, and storms). The performance of DRR good practices under both hazard-induced stress and in non-hazard conditions was examined, when both scenarios could be recorded during the study period.

Study outcomes point to a number of specific DRR good practices that have high potential to reduce the exposure and vulnerability of households and communities to natural hazards. These outcomes are intended to support policy-makers, national and local governments, development actors, the private sector, DRR practitioners, and others in making good, evidence-based decisions on how to best reduce the risk exposure of agricultural producers and their communities.

As the results strongly suggest, much wider use of farm-level DRR interventions and more extensive upscaling of these approaches should be treated as a priority in disaster risk reduction and development-related policymaking.

Study rationale and innovation

Considerable evidence about the benefits of preventive action to avoid disaster losses has already been created in both DRR and climate change adaptation literature (Coughlan de Perez et al. 2014; Pappenberger et al. 2015; Costella et al., 2017). But missing from the mix has been a cost-benefit study that systematically assesses, in different hazard-contexts, the performance of farm-level DRR practices that can be implemented by the world’s food producers themselves. Given that the 2.5 billion people on the planet whose livelihoods rely on agriculture play a central role in feeding the global population, quantifying the benefits and costs of DRR technologies for agriculture, especially at farm-level, is clearly a worthwhile