EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
ICA is a WFP corporate programme design tool, used in over 20 countries around the globe. It provides evidence to support strategic placement and combination of four broad programmatic themes: Safety Net, Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), Early Warning and Disaster Preparedness.
ICA for Pakistan was planned during November – December 2016 based on recommendations of a Stakeholder Sensitization Workshop (October 2016) and implemented during January – October 2017 under the leadership of NDMA, involving relevant line ministries, WFP, FAO and various technical institutions.
The ICA aims to: i) Categorise districts by the level of recurrence of vulnerability to food insecurity, natural hazards, core lenses and relevant contextual factors; ii) Provide information for more effective medium and long-term food security interventions related to resilience building and disaster risk reduction; and iii) Provide a set of relevant products and materials for advocacy, capacity building, future replication or update.
ICA includes two core dimensions (vulnerability to food insecurity and natural hazards: flood and drought), five core lenses (land slide, Glacial Lake Outburst Flood, earthquake, soil erosion, land degradation), and two contextual factors (dominant land cover, population density). District is a geographical unit of analysis.
ICA uses Multi-dimensional Poverty Index (MPI) as a proxy for vulnerability to food security for four provinces (Balochistan, KP, Sindh, Punjab including Islamabad). It is derived from six rounds of Pakistan’s Social and Living Standard Measurement Surveys (2004/05 – 2014/15) released by Government in 2016.
For FATA, due to lack of MPI data, food security prevalence rate of three in-depth assessments conducted by WFP and partners in 2014 - 2017 is used. National datasets available for all districts in Pakistan for flood, drought, landslide, GLOF and earthquake are used. For soil erosion, land degradation, dominant land cover and population density, Pakistan components of global datasets, are used.
Technical findings and broad programmatic recommendations are based on combined level of recurrence of two core dimensions. It classifies 123 districts of four provinces and 7 Agencies of FATA into nine different ICA Areas which are further condensed into five ICA Categories to help formulate broad programmatic recommendations. Maps of final ICA Areas and broad programmatic recommendations are presented on next pages.
Category 1 comprises 42 districts (19 in Balochistan, 13 in Sindh, 7 in KP and 3 in Punjab) having high recurrence of vulnerability to food insecurity coupled with high or medium levels of natural hazards. These districts would benefit from combinations of food security focused safety nets and comprehensive disaster risk reduction (DRR) interventions including infrastructure improvement, early warning and disaster preparedness.
Category 2 comprises 20 districts (7 in Sindh, 5 in KP, 4 in Punjab, and 4 in Balochistan) have moderate recurrence of vulnerability to food insecurity coupled with high or medium natural hazards. In these districts, flexible food security safety nets, productive or protective are suggested. Alternatively, needs-based livelihood recovery efforts in unfavourable years could protect marginal households against negative coping strategies that undermine development gains. High natural hazards suggest broad DRR interventions including infrastructure improvement, early warning and disaster preparedness.
Category 3 comprises 19 districts (8 in Balochistan, 6 in FATA and 5 in KP) showing high or moderate recurrence of vulnerability to food insecurity coupled with relatively low natural hazards. In Area 3A districts food security safety net approach similar to districts in Category 1 are appropriate, i.e. year round protective safety nets. In ICA Area 3B districts either flexible safety nets, or livelihood recovery/protection programmes would be relevant.
Category 4 comprises 28 districts (12 in Punjab, 9 in Sindh, 6 in KP, 1 in Balochistan) exhibiting low recurrence of vulnerability to food insecurity with high or medium level of natural hazards. Broad DRR (including infrastructure improvement as well as early warning and disaster preparedness) is a priority.
Specific, targeted interventions to improve food security for the most vulnerable people would be needed.
Category 5 comprises 21 districts (18 in Punjab, 2 in KP, 1 in FATA) showing low recurrence of vulnerability to food insecurity and also low natural hazards. It’s recommended to ensure effective early warning that is set within systems to trigger disaster preparedness measures.
Due to lack of food security or MPI data, ICA categorisations are not performed for FATA Frontier Regions (FR), Gilgit Baltistan, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJ&K) regions. However, available data on natural hazards, core lenses and contextual factors in these regions are still very useful to help in programming of disaster risk reduction and resilience building related strategies.