Resilience narratives and outcomes of new water supplies in the Horn of Africa drylands

This desk study explores narratives around water supply and household resilience from the perspective of funding and development agencies, and reviews policies and strategies for climate adaptation and resilience in arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs). 

A review of academic literature, programme documents, project reports and lessons learnt highlights the strengths and weaknesses in the conceptual framing of resilience by different stakeholders and the difficulties in mainstreaming resilience throughout the project cycle of design, implementation, evaluation and reporting of resilience outcomes. 

In addition, funding and development agencies operationalise the concept of resilience primarily by relying on one of its defining characteristics, the response to perturbations or disturbances, while largely ignoring learning and adaptability as well as self-organisation.

Read the report here.