Canadian Foodgrains Bank supported a 33-month Humanitarian, Early Recovery, and Development (HERD) food security initiative in eight countries (Burundi, DRCongo, Kenya, Nigeria, Madagascar, Pakistan, South Sudan, and Zimbabwe). Participant communities were affected by high levels of acute food insecurity due to conflict, displacement, economic crises, and adverse climate events that were further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Each project included humanitarian food assistance designed to increase immediate food consumption and early recovery and development activities to strengthen livelihoods and enable participants to improve resilience to current and future shocks. Gender sensitive approaches were woven into the responses and projects sought to strengthen gender equality, develop robust gender-based violence referral systems, and lay the groundwork for gender transformation.

The theory of change defined resilience as the amount of disturbance caused by shocks that a food system can absorb through coping, adapting, and transforming, while continuing to provide food security for all. A resilience analysis framework linked project activities to the development of coping, adapting, and transforming capacities which then contributed to increasing the ability of the food system to absorb the impacts from shocks, adapt to change through reorganization / self-organization, and transform through innovation, experimentation and learning.

The paper will present the results of baseline and endline quantitative household surveys ( ~ 2,800 respondents (64% female), 95% confidence interval and 5% margin of error) which measured the food security impacts of the program, complemented by a resilience analysis drawing from qualitative data collected through an outcome harvesting final evaluation using most significant change story harvesting to gather stories of resilience.

The success in contributing to resilient food security will be illustrated through a case study of one project implemented by Zimbabwe Council of Churches in Gutu, Bikita, and Chirumanzu districts, Masvingo, Zimbabwe.

The relationships between climate change and insecurity, and the interacting effects of climate change and violent conflict, have been the focus of increasing political, public, and academic attention in recent years. Within academic literature, discussions have explored whether and how climate change contributes to violent conflict, as well as engaging in critical interrogations of these relationships, while research on environmental peacebuilding has drawn attention to aspects of cooperation in the face of environmental changes in conflict-affected contexts. However, there has been more limited in-depth attention to the different ways in which environmental and climate organisations and activists are framing, engaging with, and responding to climate change- and conflict-related insecurities in specific geographic contexts. Focusing on the Lake Chad region and drawing on a review and analysis of media and advocacy statements and sources, this paper will examine the work of environmental and climate organisations and activists who are drawing attention to the multiple insecurities associated with climate change and conflict in the region, and in turn the ways in which they articulate and enact forms of safety, community, solidarity, and care.

North Central Nigeria is currently grappling with serious security crisis that have been traced to escalating conflicts between sedentary farmers and nomadic Fulani herders. In recent years, many communities in the region have come under recurring cycle of violent attacks by organised criminal groups thereby elevating the conflicts to the level of a security crisis. The crisis has led to loss of lives and livelihoods, and the destruction and displacement of communities with devastating consequences for food security. This paper analyses the overlap between farmer-herder conflicts and the current security crisis in North-Central Nigeria. Data was generated from in-depth interviews with farming and herding communities in three states of Benue, Plateau and Nasarawa within the region. Findings revealed that multiple socio-economic, political and environmental factors are at the roots of the farmer-herder conflict and the current security crisis. These include perceived or real political and economic marginalization of groups, explosive growth in human and cattle population, scarcity of grazing lands, and deep seated ethnic and/or religious animosity between farming communities and Fulani herders. Other triggers of the crisis include a combination of proliferation of weapons, availability of hard drugs, and utilization of children for cattle grazing in the context of weak and ineffective security and justice institutions. There appears to be a direct and mutually reinforcing nexus between the farmers-herders conflict and the banditry crisis in the region. To end the crisis, there is the urgent need for the federal government to address the underlying socio-economic, political and environmental causes.

The decade-long conflict in Mali coincided with an escalation of inter- and intra-community tensions, rough climatic conditions, and political instability. All these factors caused living conditions to deteriorate and contributed to an increase in households’ vulnerability, especially for people living in conflict-affected areas. Although roughly 34% of Mali’s population is aged 10 to 24 (UNFPA, 2023), adolescents are rarely included in dialogues meant to address the crises. Yet, young people have ideas and could be instrumental in finding solutions to the country’s multiple problems. The project Participatory Research on Education and Agency in Mali (PREAM) used participatory visual methods such as drawings and cellphilms (Moletsane & Mitchell, 2018) as well as a survey of 1000 adolescent boys and girls to investigate the relationship between agency and education in conflict-affected areas. It showed that youth have concerns, experiences, and ideas that they wish to share about the crises.

The proposed paper will draw on PREAM’s findings, more specifically the insights from six youth-informed community workshops conducted in the third year of the project, to discuss how the participating girls and boys saw Mali’s multi-dimensional crisis and adults’ reactions to adolescent’s suggestions for peace and conflict resolution. The paper will argue that young people’s level of awareness of the circumstances in which they live can be higher than what adults might expect, and that young people have and want to share in proposing solutions. It will also assert that participatory visual methods are a relevant way to generate exchanges, bridge inter-generational barriers and enable adolescents, especially girls, to express themselves freely.