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Dear All, Those who know me advise that tact is not my strength, so please forgive me if this late contribution appears impatient. It's intended to be constructive. I hope DfID are getting what they want from this discussion. It started well, with some clear questions from John Farrington. This attracted both lofty analysis and direct observations, though possibly too few direct observations to form a general picture. And now the heat has died a little. It seems that DfID are asking straightforward questions about what to do, and in return receiving (with some notable exceptions) long but overly cautious answers - more typical of advisors than implementers. This seems strange for a subject like risk and vulnerability, which is not difficult conceptually. Just hard to implement practically. So here, are a few reflections on three practical interventions DfID might consider for selective investment. 1 Policy interventions to support risk management. Not my area of expertise but Tom Lines proposed this and subsequently describes a (chequered) history of policy interventions for commodity price risk management. Lets hope policy interventions to support production risk management could do better. 2 Experimentation with more local schemes that encourage engagement of the private sector in innovative risk management and credit systems for local communities. I realise that engagement should be done with care but this interests me greatly because it seems practical accelerated change. Possibilities such as weather-based insurance to accompany micro-credit look reasonable - farmers and NGOs we speak to seem very keen. The concepts are being developed by the World Bank and others. Now we need to expand and coordinate experience. 3 Quantify specific risks. The need to provide secure estimates of risks is so basic we may have overlooked it. We have learnt from our experience in Honduras that vulnerability assessments based on sound scientific principles, using publicly available data and undertaken in a transparent process can help combat problems of unequal lobbying power of special interests in the distribution of resources. There is a continued need to provide sound estimates that are compatible with detailed local observation. best regards Simon C Simon Cook Project Leader, Land Use and GIS CIAT - Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical, Email: <address removed> Visit our website at: http://gisweb.ciat.cgiar.org/sig/inicio.htm Mailing Address: CIAT, A.A. 6713, Cali, Colombia. CIAT website: http://www.ciat.cgiar.org/ ============================================================= To send a reply to this message that goes to all list members, make sure that you send your reply to <address removed> To unsubscribe from this list, send an email to "<address removed>", with the message body: unsubscribe risk-and-vulnerability <your-email-address>
Please visit dfid-agriculture-consultation.nri.org.