CGIAR System Organization - Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers
CGIAR System Organization - Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers
01/10/2025 | News release | Distributed by Public on 01/10/2025 07:14
Beyond Survival: Fragility as a Catalyst for Resilience
Communities in fragile and conflict environments often face harsh conditions where instability and resource scarcity dominate daily life. Yet, these challenges have compelled individuals around the globe to adapt, developing innovative survival strategies to secure food and water while improving living conditions. Necessity has driven creative solutions across regions, from the Middle East to East Africa, Central and Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. These strategies not only ensure survival during crises but also hold the potential to evolve into long-term, sustainable solutions, enabling communities to transition from fragility to resilience.
Supporting this transition is the core of CGIAR Initiatives like Fragility to Resilience in Central and West Asia and North Africa (F2R-CWANA), which focuses on transforming fragile agrifood systems. By leveraging existing survival strategies, F2R-CWANA and similar efforts aim to catalyse meaningful changes in these systems, turning short-term coping mechanisms into long-term pathways for resilience. This blog highlights diverse examples from around the globe, showcasing how initiatives like F2R-CWANA can serve as multipliers, scaling survival strategies into impactful, science-driven solutions that benefit vulnerable communities. F2R-CWANA plays a vital role in converting these strategies into lasting resilience, fostering sustainable growth and stability in the most fragile regions.
Resilience in fragile zones: global innovations for sustaining water, energy, and food systems
Communities in the Middle East have been forced to innovate to survive political unrests, armed conflicts, and resource limitations. Solar energy is being widely used in Yemen for residential, commercial, and agricultural applications due to the national power grid's failure1. This adaptation strategy paves the way for decentralized and sustainable energy solutions while simultaneously addressing the current energy problem and influencing the nation's future energy trajectory.
Meanwhile, in Iraq, decades of instability, poor management, and climate change have exacerbated water scarcity and increased agricultural land salinization. To adapt, farmers are turning to salt-tolerant crop variants such as barley and some types of wheat verities that thrive in saline soils where conventional crops fail2. Similarly, the F2R-CWANA initiative has developed a soil salinity roadmap for Egypt, offering valuable insights that can be adapted to address salinity challenges in Iraq and other affected regions. In Syria, communities are reviving ancient Qanat systems- underground channels that use gravity to transport groundwater3. This blend of innovative use of traditional techniques, driven by necessity, is enabling Syrians to access water sustainably, even amidst ongoing unrest.
Communities in East Africa have had to come up with innovative strategies to secure food and water due to conflicts and climate challenges. Small-scale urban farming has become popular in Somalia because of disturbed food supply chains, converting vacant places into fruitful plots4. This strategy can potentially develop into a sustainable urban agricultural model, making it more than just a temporary adaptation measure.
Due to the failure of irrigation systems brought on by the recent armed conflict in Sudan, many farmers now depend on harvesting rainwater to maintain crop cultivation5. Sudan has the potential to increase the resilience of its agriculture system by expanding these efforts with improved training and advanced technology. Under the F2R-CWANA initiative, an inventory of sustainable land management practices for marginal landscapes in Uzbekistan, focusing on water harvesting and storage, was compiled and mapped to the most suitable areas. Building a similar inventory for Sudan can be instrumental in guiding the country and other fragile states in adopting targeted, context-specific water management strategies, enabling more effective use of scarce resources and bolstering agricultural resilience amid ongoing challenges.
To reduce soil erosion and increase crop yields, communities in Ethiopia's Tigray area embrace agroforestry, which involves incorporating trees into farmlands6. This strategy improves soil health and strengthens resilience against climate variability, laying the groundwork for sustainable farming in the region. F2R-CWANA, in collaboration with innovators through its Agritech Innovation Challenges in Morocco, Egypt and Uzbekistan is advancing the adoption of agroforestry as a powerful tool to combat desertification and restore degraded lands. The outcomes of these innovative initiatives have the potential to provide robust, science-based evidence, paving the way for widespread adoption and effective implementation of agroforestry practices.
Some Asian communities have resorted to ancient practices and creative solutions to protect their livelihoods in the face of various challenges, from conflict to climatic extremes. Frequent typhoons in Southeast Asia have forced the Philippines to implement resistant crops and floating gardens as adaptive agricultural practices against flood risk8, guaranteeing food security in extreme weather. In the meantime, floating rice farming has been revived in Myanmar, enabling farmers to continue producing food during monsoon seasons and grow crops in places vulnerable to flooding9. These adaptive measures enhance climate resilience, ensuring communities thrive despite environmental and socio-political challenges. Extensive field trials to evaluate and create demand for hundreds of genetic innovations of important food crops like barely, faba bean, lentil, potato, bread and durum wheat have been conducted under F2R-CWANA in several countries, including Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, and Uzbekistan. Results of these initiative are crucial to sustaining food security in fragile zones under climate change.
Saline soil in the Egyptian oasis of Kharga (Credit: ©Ahmed Elshemy)Turning survival strategies into sustainability
Building on this momentum of survival strategies, communities living under fragility supported with a comprehensive approach will be able to convert these short-term coping measures into long-term, sustainable solutions. This involves supporting them with science and data-driven insights, a role that F2R-CWANA plays by delivering innovative research and solutions tailored to the unique challenges of fragile agrifood systems. Development of community capacities is crucial because it equips people with the knowledge and abilities needed to sustain and expand innovations. Creating an enabling environment with supportive laws and policy frameworks is required. Furthermore, financial assistance and focused infrastructure investments can provide access to vital technology like solar power and reviving irrigation systems. Lastly, encouraging information exchange and cooperative networks can stimulate innovation and cross-regional learning. By integrating these elements, and leveraging F2R-CWANA expertise and partnership, crisis-driven adaptation strategies evolve into long-term resilient, sustainable pathways that secure the future of vulnerable communities in fragile zones.
Authors: Muhammad Khalifa, Maha Al-Zu'bi, Naga M. Velpuri, Yousef Brouziyne
Acknowledgement: This work is supported by the CGIAR Initiative on Fragility to Resilience in Central and West Asia and North Africa
More information:
1 https://www.ifc.org/en/stories/2021/202101-yemen-solar
2 https://acsess.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/agg2.20151
3 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02918402
4 https://www.wfp.org/stories/planting-hope-how-eu-funded-agriculture-project-lifting-farmers-somalia
6 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42532-024-00195-9
8 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912420300456
9 https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2019/03/12/shade-grown-coffee-sustainable/