Food Security, Nutrition and Livelihoods

Food security in a humanitarian context involves ensuring an adequate supply of food and meeting nutritional needs and cultural expectations, before and after a crisis. Environment, food security and livelihoods are co-dependent. If land is degraded or prone to natural hazards less food is produced and significant food shortages can occur. Food secure communities, especially those reliant on the environment for their livelihoods, require healthy and productive ecosystems. Interventions that focus on short-term benefits and neglect consideration of the environment can jeopardize long-term food security and livelihood opportunities. This reduces societal resilience and undermines recovery opportunities. Implementing food security programs sensitive to environmental and climatic conditions supports sustainability, whilst ensuring current and future food security and access to water and energy. This is particularly important considering increasing external pressures from climate change and natural hazards.

The Sphere Standards (2018) make the link between environment and food security, livelihoods and nutrition. They state that food assistance should be delivered in a way that protects, preserves and restores the natural environment from further degradation, and highlights the impacts of cooking fuel on the environment and the importance of livelihoods strategies that do not contribute to deforestation or soil erosion (Sphere Standards: Food security standard 5.1, Key Action 4). The Sphere Standards also state that environmentally sensitive options for income generation should be chosen for livelihoods interventions whenever possible (Livelihoods standard 7.2: Income and employment, Key Action 6).

Humanitarian activities can cause negative environmental impacts connected to food. These include:

• Provision of unsuitable food packing material (against local regulations; not recyclable) and related improper disposal of food packaging waste.
• Environmental degradation and possible security and conflict risks through increased need for firewood/water collection for cooking caused by the selection of food that may require long cooking time or large quantities of water.
• Procured goods, if not properly sourced, may lead to unsustainable cropping and livestock production systems, agrochemical use, land conversion (e.g. from forest to pasture), and the lack of treatment of waste in food processing.
• In some cases problems such as unsustainable wood/water use can lead to additional impacts during disasters:
  • For example, excessive tilling may lead to erosion and mud flows.
• Relief interventions can have negative impacts on food security:
  • For example, changing groundwater levels affect low technology irrigation.

Achieving food security can lead to a variety of environmental challenges such as waste creation. Availability of water which can change quickly after disasters or conflict can create sanitation problems leading to increased health concerns and higher rates of infectious and diarrheal diseases. This, combined with a disruption to a stable food supply has a flow-on effect to people’s livelihoods and can lead to malnutrition.

Climate change can exacerbate drivers of food insecurity and hunger. Climate change also disproportionately affects the poorest, who are often the most food insecure, through unpredictable rainfall patterns, or large losses during extreme storms, which can lead to decreasing crop productivity. Such shocks may result in food insecurity during conflict, natural disaster, sudden onset or protracted crisis. Higher prices of food following crises affects a household’s access to food and fulfilling dietary requirements.

The environmental implications of using cash in food security and livelihoods programming are mixed. Some potential advantages include the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions involved in the transport and storage of food; support to smallholder farmers and; reduction of packaging. Disadvantages of cash to local farmers include the potential support of unsustainable practices (pesticides, local water resources).

The NEAT+ [link to download the tool and guidance] screening tool food security module can be used as a checklist of the major issues of concern to factor in while planning a food security project.  Some of the main environmental impacts to consider in different components of programming are:

Direct food assistance:

• Solid waste generation (packaging)
• Organic waste generation from inappropriate food stock and food conservation
• Deforestation and natural resources (cooking fuel and water usage)
• Indoor air pollution (cooking fuel usage)
• Emissions and energy usage (transport and procurement).

Agriculture

• Water consumption (irrigation)
• Water pollution and contamination (agrochemicals and pesticides).
• Loss of biodiversity (crop selection)
• Disturbance of traditional seed management
• Land and soil degradation (tillage, rotations, etc.)
• Deforestation (land management)
• Use of inappropriate agricultural/farming machinery; distribution of machinery in insecure targeted areas can create waste management problems
• Risk of fire in practice for food processing
• Management of natural resources for food production and supply
• Support to agricultural campaigns aiming to attract international companies, leading to land grabbing and internal displacements.

Livestock:

• Water consumption (watering needs)
• Water pollution (manure and slaughter)
• Land and soil degradation (grazing)
• Deforestation (land management)
• Loss of biodiversity (stock selection, wildlife contact)
• In conflict sensitive contexts, livestock distribution can cause harm to the beneficiaries. (Reference LEGS);
• Expansion of animal disease.

Fisheries and aquaculture:

• Water pollution (bioaccumulation and waste products)
• Loss of biodiversity (stock management, species selection).

Irrigation and water management:

• Water consumption (management, usage and losses)
• Water pollution (source protection)
• Land and soil degradation (waterlogging and salinization)
• Loss of biodiversity (downstream implications)
• Conflict over resources (management).

Livelihoods:

• Small-scale livelihoods interventions that could have environmental impact: environmentally unfriendly activities such as charcoal making, wood cutting, illegal hunting.
• For business development support (for income-generating activities, small-medium or large-scale business development), distribution of assets, machinery and cash in an area of insecurity: insecurity can lead to conflict and the displacement of people, the abandonment of business properties and assets, creating a problem of waste management.
• Support to commercialisation and income-generation activities: use of un-recyclable packaging and labels to boost commercialisation creates waste if the product is not absorbed by the market.
• Increased levels of waste produced in the local market that is not covered by the waste absorptive capacity may lead to environmental degradation.
• Increased use of IT for commercialisation and financial transactions lead to increased consumption of energy and production of IT waste.
• Links between cash transfer programming and environment
• Training: Gaps in training on safety and security in the use of CFW for rehabilitation of community infrastructure; Gaps in maintenance skills for mechanized agriculture

In IDP and Refugee camps

• Ungoverned access to natural resources.
• Customs or possessions (e.g. livestock) brought by refugees that will place additional stress on natural resources; social customs, which often change when rural people are accommodated in camp situations: this may have negative effects on how natural resources are used and accessed.
• Lack of supplies, resources or saleable skills, environmental damage through natural resource extraction.

Opportunities to minimize and address these environmental impacts related to food

Food production/procurement:

• Perform a fuel assessment to inform food selection (potentially provide fuel together with food).
• Food/Cash for work projects can incorporate simple environmental action plans developed by the communities and local authorities (tree planting/reforestation in barren hillsides, camp clean-up, environmental rehabilitation, construction of agricultural terraces, etc.)
• Procure food as close to where it is needed as possible, but be aware of farming conditions and their environmental impact.

Food processing:

• Assess energy sources (alternative energy sources), water usage and pollution resulting from processing.

Food packaging, transport and storage (logistics):

• Work with local/national authorities: know and respect local regulations/laws.
• Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: consider the entire life cycle of food assistance (consider the fate of packaging/leftovers/waste and potential for reduction).
• Energy implications around transport options generally well understood, but logistics staff do not decide how urgently assistance is needed: providing information on the urgency of the matter can be a useful strategy to guide less environmentally damaging forms of transport.

Food use:

• Generally, food provided should not require long cooking time or large quantities of water.
• Include fuel efficient cooking techniques (e.g. pre-soaking beans, sheltering cooking fires, etc.) in training and sensitization activities and promote fuel efficient stoves to reduce wood use for cooking as well as alternative energy sources.