Poor urban households frequently live in highly polluted environments where a lack of clean water, sanitation, drainage, and solid-waste disposal services contribute to contamination of water and food, inadequate levels of hygiene, and exposure to vector-borne diseases such as malaria. All of these factors contribute to family wellbeing, income, and impact on livelihoods.

Promoting good environmental stewardship contributes to social and economic benefits. To adequately protect agricultural livelihoods and enhance Food and Nutrition Security (FNS), it is critical to reducing the underlying drivers of the risks affecting farmers, pastoralists, fishers, and foresters.

Humanitarian food security activities can support or hinder market recovery. If markets are not supported in recovering, humanitarian crises become protracted, which increases the duration and extent of associated environmental stresses. Where markets are supported to recover, this should be planned so that it is sustainable and not harming, or at least minimising harm to the environment.

The negative impact of natural hazards and other threats to FNS can be effectively reduced, mitigated, or prevented through investment in sustainable models of food production and the application of appropriate agricultural technologies and practices, which raise yields and increase resilience against production failure. Examples include better management of crop species and varieties, the promotion of crop, livestock, and fish varieties that are more resilient to stress (floods, droughts, or saline conditions), plant breeding to develop new adaptive and productive varieties, development of efficient seed delivery systems, and resilient animal breeding, fodder conservation, or conservation agriculture.

Given the strong dependency and interconnectedness of natural resources, the environment, natural hazards and food security, it is necessary to apply an ecosystem approach and to address the underlying drivers of risk and vulnerability by integrating sustainable environmental and natural resource management practices into DRR efforts that seek to make livelihoods more resilient.

Unsustainable Nutrition activities, exacerbating existing or creating new environmental impacts

Loss of natural resources and biodiversity impeding recovery and diminishing community resilience

Deforestation, and water and soil degradation.

Environmental impacts undermine the short- and long-term effectiveness and sustainability of Livelihood programming outcomes and can exacerbate existing or introduce new environmental challenges. This can also lead to a loss of livelihoods and biodiversity, impede future recovery efforts as well as diminish community resilience.

Providing free inputs can also disrupt traditional social support, compromise redistribution mechanisms or affect private sector operators. This can create tensions and reduce future access to inputs

For example, global and national modeling studies suggest that yields of major cereals will decline under scenarios of increased temperature, especially in tropical countries. Water scarcity threatens the ability of large parts of the world to continue its present agricultural growth, and agricultural land is increasingly in conflict with infrastructure development and with protected areas.

Develop plans to prevent and mitigate environmental risks identified (See preparedness activity);

Aim to generate environmental benefits from your intervention – do not just limit yourself to mitigating environmental impacts. This is an opportunity to build resilience (e.g. through changes to livelihoods, use of new technologies and environmental management approaches which can contribute to peacebuilding and integration between affected populations and host communities, improved food security, risk reduction, and increased environmental stewardship through training and capacity building);

In protracted crises, making use of local capacities, increase the accountability of the response and root it in the local context. See “Accountability and Communicating with Communities” section.

Mainstream environment through each technical subsectors

Inclusion of environmental safeguards into institutional forms for project proposals (e.g. concerning project description, reporting requirements, etc.)

To mitigate look at :

1. How can the direct and indirect impacts be reduced/ avoided? Understand the climatic conditions of the project area to foster adapted practices.
2. Have you reviewed best practices, case studies, etc. from other organisations doing similar types of activities?
3. Have you consulted with the local community/government to identify traditional and environmentally responsible solutions?
4. Use secondary data such as reports on environmental determinants of health, air pollution, deforestation, water quality, waste management, mining, agricultural pests, and similar.
5. Disaggregated data from other sources such as clinic/hospital admissions can tell you a lot about the environment and its relationship to vulnerable groups.

ENHANCE environmental benefits in the project: Aim to generate environmental benefits from your intervention – do not just limit yourself to mitigating environmental impacts. This is an opportunity to build resilience (e.g. through changes to livelihoods, use of new technologies and environmental management approaches which can contribute to peacebuilding and integration between affected populations and host communities, improved food security, risk reduction, and increased environmental stewardship through training and capacity building)

To enhance environmental benefits look at:

1. After impact assessment and mitigation, what other enhancement measures can be added to the project?
2. Can enhancement activities be combined with other sectors?
   Develop approaches, aligned with agroecological principles, to support nutrition and sustainable diets, within the context of gender and climate impacts of production, distribution, and consumption of healthy, sustainable diets.
3. Promoting the use of local underutilized and neglected species high in nutritional value.
4. If inputs are required for the livelihoods project, such as timber for constructing markets or seed stock for agriculture, the project manager should ensure that the materials are sustainable (e.g., use sustainable timber or local noninvasive species for agriculture plants). Note: Better management practices (BMPs) are flexible, field-tested, and cost-effective techniques that protect the environment by helping to measurably reduce major impacts of growing commodities on the planet’s water, air, soil, and biological diversity. They can also help producers make a profit in an environmentally sustainable way. BMPs have been developed for a wide range of activities such as fishing, farming, and forestry.

Here under are some examples of environmental inclusive programmatic guidance:

• Focus on a specific territory or geographic area at the sub-national level that is prone to natural hazards and/or other threats to food and nutrition security, such as watersheds or agro-ecological zones.
• Integrated and interdisciplinary interventions that combine technologies and practices in agriculture, livestock, fisheries/aquaculture, forestry, and natural resource management for a coherent approach to building resilience across the livelihoods of smallholders.
• An ecosystem perspective to ensure the integrated management of land, water, and other key resources that promote conservation and sustainable use in an equitable way.