USAID's Approach to Developing and Managing Shock Responsive Programming and Adaptive Mechanisms

There is an increasing recognition within USAID and the larger international development community of the need for a shock responsive approach in development activities to help countries and communities recover from shocks and adapt livelihood approaches and management practices to mitigate the impacts of future shocks. These shocks (external short-term deviations from long-term trends) can have substantial negative effects on people’s current state of well-being, level of assets, livelihoods, safety, or their ability to withstand future shocks. Many areas prone to shocks also experience long-term pressures (e.g. degradation of natural resources, urbanization, political instability, or diminishing social capital) that further undermine the stability of a system and increase vulnerability within it. Shock responsiveness is especially relevant in regions and agro-climatic zones subject to recurrent shocks, such as droughts and floods. Even in areas not subject to recurrent climatic shocks, crises associated with a wide array of shocks and stresses are possible, if not probable, within USAID’s usual five-year project implementation timeframe. In turn, this demands a more flexible, shock-responsive approach to development investment and programming.

At the October Adaptation Community Meeting André Mershon from the Bureau for Food Security will present on USAID’s guidance for shock responsive programming and outline methods for proactively designing adaptive and shock responsive activities, as well as options to respond to shocks through existing development programs. This will also include examples from Ethiopia and the Sahel. 

A live webinar of the event will be available here.

About the speaker: 

André Mershon is a Resilience Adviser with USAID’s Center for Resilience in the Bureau for Food Security. In this role, he supports a portfolio of resilience investments across 13 countries, including strategy and program design. He was previously a Climate Change Specialist in USAID's Global Climate Change Office, where he worked on adaptation, gender, and training.

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