Understanding the impact of post-disaster needs assessment on agriculture sector recovery
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The great majority of communities affected by disasters in developing countries are directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. Climate change has been linked to a significant increase in the frequency and severity of disasters in the recent past, leading to natural hazardous events that have had several negative repercussions on the agriculture sector and sub-sectors (i.e. crops, livestock, fishery and aquaculture) and on the life of the people depending on them.
This paper will firstly review the commonly used methods of assessing the damages and losses to the agriculture sector and its sub-sectors, with particular emphasis on the strengths and limitations of the Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) methodology.
After that, it will consider the financial implications of disasters and discuss the necessity of developing follow-up mechanisms to assess the proportion of disbursed funds required to implement response interventions. This will involve an analysis of the extent to which agriculture assistance is usually prioritized in the formal and informal sector, and the typology of targeted and assisted beneficiaries with an emphasis on the gender dimension.
The paper concludes with recommendations aiming at improving the current standardized processes of assessing the impacts and effects of disasters, in order to enhance the effectiveness of needs assessment towards resource mobilization and recovery processes.
Authors:
Daniele Barelli and Matthias Mollet
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Via delle Terme di Caracalla, Rome, Italy
Ricardo Zapata-Martí
European Union, Rue Montoyer 31,
1000 Brussels, Belgium
Naresh Singh
Middle East Research Institute,
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