CGIAR SEMINAR SERIES
Famines and Fragility: Making humanitarian, developmental, and peacebuilding responses work
Co-organized by IFPRI, CGIAR, and Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)
14:30 TO 16:15 CET
JUN 11, 2024 - 9:30 TO 11:15AM EDT

Globally, the number of people facing crisis-level or worse acute food insecurity has more than doubled since 2017. The 2024 Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC), which informs the Global Network Against Food Crises on where humanitarian and developmental assistance is most needed, reported 282 million people in 59 food crisis countries faced crisis-levels of acute food insecurity and more than 700,000 people suffered famine in 2023. These numbers have increased with the crises in Gaza, Sudan, and Haiti.

Conflict and fragility are major drivers of food crises, often compounded by weather extremes and economic shocks. Sound understanding of these drivers and of the structural factors underlying fragility is needed for timely and appropriate crisis responses and for preventative action. However, no one size fits all. Food crisis conditions and drivers vary greatly across countries, and crisis responders continue to face challenges to effective action along the humanitarian-development-peacebuilding (HDP) nexus.

As the sixth policy seminar in the CGIAR series on Strengthening Food Systems Resilience, this seminar will take stock of what we know about key drivers of protracted food crises and persistent fragility and about the obstacles to successful HDP action. Speakers will discuss: recent trends in acute food insecurity and their causes; the severity and dynamics of acute malnutrition in rapidly developing food crises, with a focus on new methods of collecting evidence; building resilience to economic shocks in fragile, conflict-affected food crisis countries; and ways to adapt humanitarian assistance, social protection, and livelihood rebuilding programs for fragile contexts with vast numbers of displaced people.

Opening Remarks
Johan Swinnen, Director General, IFPRI and Managing Director, Systems Transformation Science Group, CGIAR
Hendrik Denker, Deputy Head of Division 123, Food and Nutrition Security, German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)

Panel I - Protracted Food Crises: How to break the vicious circle of conflict, climate shocks and economic crises?

Global Food Crises and Fragility: Trends and drivers
Sara McHattie, Global Coordinator, Food Security Information Network (FSIN)

Anticipating and Dealing with Food Crisis Risks: The role of preventative lending windows
Sarah Simons, Program Manager, Partnerships & Quality Team, Agriculture and Food Global Practice, The World Bank

Addressing Food Crises Through the Humanitarian-Development-Peacebuilding (HDP) Nexus: Challenges and opportunities
Mia Beers, Deputy Assistant Administrator in the Bureau for Resilience, Environment and Food Security, United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

Panel II – Lessons for Research and Policy from Four Hotspots of Hunger, Famine, and Fragility 

Famine in Gaza: Questions for food crisis risk monitoring and preventive action in fragile and conflict-ridden contexts
Rob Vos, Director Markets, Trade, and Institutions, IFPRI

Methodological Innovations for Understanding Myanmar’s Current Food Crisis and Post-Conflict Reconstruction
Derek Headey, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI

Sudan’s Imminent Famine: What do we know and what can be done to prevent a major humanitarian disaster?
Khalid Siddig, Senior Research Fellow, and Sudan Country Strategy Support Program Leader, IFPRI

Moderator

Charlotte Hebebrand, Director of Communications and Public Affairs, IFPRI

More about this Event: https://www.ifpri.org/event/famines-and-fragility-making-humanitarian-developmental-and-peacebuilding-responses-work
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Famines and Fragility: Making humanitarian, developmental, and peacebuilding responses work

Introductory Remarks by Geraldo B. Martha Jr., Coordinator, Embrapa, Labex-USA
 
Successful agricultural transformations around the world provide critical lessons and offer insights into opportunities for other countries seeking to take this step forward.

 
At this special event, we will learn about Brazil’s agricultural transformation from Embrapa’s President, Maurício Lopes. IFPRI Director General Shenggen Fan will share insights from Asian countries, ERS Administrator Mary Bohman will review the experience of the United States, and Asia-Brazil Agro Alliance President Marcos Jank will discuss the role of the food industry in agricultural transformation.

IFPRI Special Event:  Transforming Agriculture - 5/15/2018 - GMartha

Speaker: Marcos Sawaya Jank, President, Asia-Brazil Agro Alliance and IFPRI Board member
 
Successful agricultural transformations around the world provide critical lessons and offer insights into opportunities for other countries seeking to take this step forward.
 
At this special event, we will learn about Brazil’s agricultural transformation from Embrapa’s President, Maurício Lopes. IFPRI Director General Shenggen Fan will share insights from Asian countries, ERS Administrator Mary Bohman will review the experience of the United States, and Asia-Brazil Agro Alliance President Marcos Jank will discuss the role of the food industry in agricultural transformation.

IFPRI Special Event:  Transforming Agriculture - 5/15/2018  - M.Jank

What happens when a child is malnourished? Can such a child ever “catch up” later in life? Why does urbanization and obesity seem to go hand in hand—and what does this mean for food production? We’ll explore big picture food system questions today on the Leading Voices in Food with our guest Dr. Shenggen Fan.

The Leading Voices in Food

Shenggen Fan on Hunger, Climate Change and the Hope of Innovation

Speaker: William A. Masters, Professor, Tufts University

Interventions and innovation can lower the price of individual foods, but healthy eating depends on access to a mix of foods from diverse sources. How has the overall cost of meeting dietary needs changed over time worldwide, and in Africa and South Asia specifically? What determines the cost of a healthy diet? And how does affordability affect dietary intake and health status in different locales?

To answer these questions, Changing Access to Nutritious Diets in Africa and South Asia (CANDASA) (https://sites.tufts.edu/candasa) has been using new food price indexes that account for food substitutions to meet nutritional needs to evaluate food systems all over the world, including in Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Malawi, and Tanzania.

This seminar will present the outcomes of CANDASA’s work to date, with a panel discussion featuring field researchers from each country to discuss the local and global implications of their results.

Research by Tufts and IFPRI on this topic is supported by UKAid and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

IFPRI Policy Seminar:  What is the Cost of a Healthy Diet? - 5/29/2019 - WMasters

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries. Established in 1975, IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 50 countries. It is a research center of CGIAR, a worldwide partnership engaged in agricultural research for development.

Famines and Fragility: Making humanitarian, developmental, and peacebuilding responses work

International Food Policy Research Institute

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