Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council – The EU approach to resilience: learning from food security crises

The EU is one of the world's largest donors providing life-saving assistance to people affected by various crises. Over recent years the demands for such assistance have increased substantially – far outstripping the resources available. Such assistance is vital, but it is aimed mainly at coping with emergency situations and needs to be supplemented by support to populations at risk to withstand, cope with and adapt to repeated adverse events and long-term stress.

Building resilience is a long-term effort that needs to be firmly embedded in national policies and planning. It is a part of the development process, and genuinely sustainable development will need to tackle the root causes of recurrent crises rather than just their consequences. Working with vulnerable populations to build their resilience is also a fundamental part of poverty reduction which is the ultimate aim of EU development policy, as has been reaffirmed by the EU in the Agenda for Change.

In response to the massive food crises in the Sahel region and in the Horn of Africa, the Commission has recently taken two initiatives: Supporting Horn of African Resilience (SHARE) and "l'Alliance Globale pour l'Initiative Résilience Sahel" (AGIR).These set out a new approach to building up the resilience of vulnerable populations.

The purpose of this Communication is to use the lessons from these experiences to improve the effectiveness of the EU's support to reducing vulnerability in developing countries, which are disaster-prone by including resilience as a central aim.

In addition, this Communication aims to contribute to the international debate on enhancing food security and resilience in a wider sense, notably in the context of the G8, G20, the Committee on World Food Security, the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) initiative, Rio Conventions negotiations and the Global Alliance for the Horn of Africa.

EUR-Lex: COM(2012)586: Follow the progress of this document through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2012:586:FIN

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