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xxx terms
Access
Access by households/individuals to adequate resources (entitlements) for acquiring appropriate foods for a nutritious diet.
Accessibility
One of the four pillars of food security. A household's ability to physically, economically, and socially obtain a necessary amount of food on a regular basis by purchasing, bartering, borrowing, or receiving food aid or gifts. See also: availability.
Acute Food Insecurity
Food security at a specific moment in time, regardless of causes, context, or duration. Severity is defined by assessing the degree to which households can meet basic survival needs and maintain their normal livelihoods.
Analogue Year
A year in history that shares key characteristics with the current year and can therefore help to support assumptions about how the current year may progress. In food security analysis, analogue years are most commonly used in relation to climate and seasonal forecasts. Information about current atmospheric and oceanic conditions/patterns is used to identify similar years that may suggest likely precipitation and temperature behavior. Analogue years can also be used to look at other issues, such as market behavior and food prices.
Availability
One of the four pillars of food security. The total amount of food that is present in a country or given area by means of domestic production, imports, food stocks, and food aid.
Availability of sufficient quantities of food of appropriate quality, supplied through domestic production or imports (including food aid).
Baseline
The quantified analysis of sources of food and income and of expenditure for households in each wealth group over a defined reference period.
Baseline Storage Sheet
A spreadsheet that enables field teams to enter, check and analyse individual interview data in the field, and to analyze and summarize field data during the interim and final data analysis sessions.
Baseline Year
A type of reference year. Usually a normal year; neither especially good nor especially bad.
Chronic Food Insecurity
Persistent or seasonal inability to consume adequate diets for a healthy and active life, mainly due to structural causes. Chronic food insecurity occurs even in normal, non-crisis years when shocks do not occur.
Coping
Contending with difficulties and acting to overcome them. In food security, we typically speak of coping capacity and coping strategies. For the purpose of scenario development, we distinguish between coping strategies that, if successful, help to mitigate acute food and income deficits (e.g., the sale of assets) and coping strategies that indicate reduced dietary quantity or quality (e.g., skipping meals).
Coping Capacity
The ability of households to diversify and expand access to various sources of food, income, and other basic needs, and thus to cope with a specific stress.
Coping Strategies
Activities to which people resort in order to obtain food, income and/or services when their normal means of livelihood have been disrupted or other shocks/hazards decrease their access to basic needs.
Crisis
See International Phase Classification (IPC)
IPC phase 3. Households either:
Have food consumption gaps that are reflected by high or above-usual acute malnutrition.
OR
Are marginally able to meet minimum food needs but only by depleting essential livelihood assets or through crisis-coping strategies.
Emergency
See International Phase Classification (IPC)
IPC phase 4. Households either:
Have large food consumption gaps which are reflected in very high acute malnutrition and excess mortality.
OR
Are able to mitigate large food consumption gaps but only by employing emergency livelihood strategies and asset liquidation.
Famine
See International Phase Classification (IPC)
IPC phase 5. Households have an extreme lack of food and/or other basic needs even after full employment of coping strategies. Starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident. For Famine Classification, an area needs to have extreme critical levels of acute malnutrition and mortality.
Food Security (FS)
Food and nutrition security is achieved when adequate, safe, and nutritious food is available, accessible to, and well utilized by all individuals at all times to support a healthy and productive life.
Food Security Conditions
The context with regard to external circumstances and influences related to food security; includes the variables, causal factors, and drivers of food security. Food security conditions are different from food security outcomes. Outcomes refer to the final situation faced by households or areas once all conditions and responses have been analyzed. For example, food security conditions may describe seasonal progress, food prices, and labor demand, while food security outcomes describe whether households are able to access and utilize the food needed for a healthy life.
Food Security Outcomes
The net result of changes in household incomes and food access plus the effect of response by households, governments, or other actors in terms of food consumption, livelihoods maintenance, nutritional status, and mortality risk. Outcomes can be positive or negative. A description of food security outcomes should explain who is food insecure (e.g., what population or wealth group; the size of the food insecure population), and the expected duration and severity of food insecurity.
Hazard
See Risk, Shock, and Vulnerability
A dangerous phenomenon, threat, human activity, or condition that can cause or precipitate disaster. Hazards pose a potential threat to life, health, property, or the environment and can be natural or induced by human processes. Most hazards are dormant, with only a potential risk of harm. Once a hazard becomes "active,” it is called a shock (or in some cases, a hazard event).
Household (HH)
A group of people, each with different abilities and needs, who live together most of the time and contribute to a common economy, and share the food and other income from this.
Household Economy
The sum of ways in which a household acquires its income, its savings and asset holdings, and by which it meets its food and non-food needs.
Household Economy Analysis (HEA)
Analysis that defines a livelihood based on geography, systems of production, and wealth. It considers the interaction of all economic groups, specifically as to sources of food and cash, assets and opportunities, and options at times of crisis.
Lean Season
The time of year when a household’s access to food and/or cash income is typically most constrained. This usually occurs during the months between harvests when food is scarce because household stocks have been exhausted and the harvest has not yet begun. During this period, households tend to be at greater risk of food insecurity. Use lean season and not hunger season or other terms.
Livelihood Baseline
The quantified analysis of household livelihood options including a detailed breakdown of sources of food, cash and expenditure patterns, and coping capacity for households in each wealth group over a defined reference period.
Livelihood Profile
Reports that describe wealth groups and compare their various sources of food and income.
Livelihood Protection Threshold
Also Livelihood Protection Needs; See also Survival Threshold
The total income required to sustain local livelihoods. This means total expenditure to:
Ensure basic survival (that is, all items covered in the survival threshold),
Maintain access to basic services such as health and education,
Sustain livelihoods in the medium to longer term, for example, purchasing of seeds or veterinary drugs, and
Achieve a minimum locally acceptable standard of living, for example, purchasing basic clothing or coffee/tea
Livelihood Strategies
The ways in which households utilize and combine their assets to obtain food, income and other goods and services.
Livelihood Zone Maps
Maps that illustrate the country by zone, showing areas where people generally have the same options for obtaining food and income and engaging in trade.
Livelihood Zones (LZ or LHZ)
Geographical areas within which people share broadly the same patterns of access to food and income, and have the same access to markets.
Livelihoods
The means by which households obtain and maintain access to essential resources to ensure their immediate, medium-term, and long-term survival.
Minimal
See also International Phase Classification (IPC)
IPC phase 1. Households are able to meet essential food and non-food needs without engaging in atypical and unsustainable strategies to access food and income.
Most Likely (ML)
A near term projection for the next three months.
Most Likely 1 (ML1)
The first projection period (the first four months) within an eight-month scenario.
Most Likely 2 (ML2)
The second projection period (the second four months) within an eight-month scenario.
Normal Conditions
The typical or average range of attributes, characteristics, or relationships (e.g., weather, market behavior, livelihoods, etc.). They provide a framework, baseline, or reference period that can be compared to current and/or projected conditions.
Outcome Analysis
An analysis of how access to food and cash for each wealth group will be affected by a defined hazard, and of the extent to which other food or cash sources can be added or expanded, or non-essential expenditure reduced, to make up the initial shortages.