The Compound Risk Framework: Assessing fragility and key drivers of food insecurity in Haiti, Mozambique and Ghana

Climate variability is increasingly impacting natural and human systems, exposing societies to compound and interrelated environmental, socioeconomic, and political crises. The landscape of global conflict has intensified, with more countries experiencing violent conflict than at any point in the last three decades. However, our approaches to these issues are often siloed and fragmented, rendering them inadequate at capturing the complexity of interconnected systems. One of the many compound impacts is the escalating threat to food security. The role of climate variability has increased in recent decades, owing to more frequent extreme events, exacerbating existing vulnerabilities of crops, ecosystems, people and communities. In order to understand and address the fragility of these complex systems, we require innovative and integrated approaches to establish effective early warning measures.

Compound impacts predominately occur in regions highly vulnerable to climate variability, where resilience and coping mechanisms to absorb, adapt and recover from the changing climate conditions are often lacking. These regions are frequently characterized by high levels of poverty, political inequality, and reliance on natural resources, particularly agricultural production. However, the effects of compound and cascading crises are increasingly felt even in areas not traditionally seen as vulnerable. This is evident in the spill-over effects of war-induced food system disruptions, such as the case of the Ukraine war, which has severely impacted food security in seemingly unaffected countries such as African countries dependent on Ukraine grain and fertilizer imports.

Water, land and food dynamics form the core of these complex systems. Despite increasing attention towards different components of these systems, knowledge about which geographies are or might be at risk for insecurity, and comprehending what the underlying factors and their interactions are, remains challenging. These difficulties arise in part due to a lack of data sources – either availability or coverage – but also due to methodological challenges. Data and analytical tools capable of considering the complex interplay of climate, socio-economic vulnerabilities, conflict and food systems are needed to systematically understand compound risks so appropriate programs and policies may be implemented to monitor their evolution, and eventually, to mitigate them.

This report outlines the Compound Risk Framework (CRF), a quantitative approach designed to complement the monitoring of community fragility, and instability, often referred to as the opposite of resilience, that could lead to food crises. This framework is strategically positioned to support both short term decision-making support to humanitarian assistance and long-term resilience-building processes. By adopting a systems approach and leveraging innovative modelling techniques, the CRF integrates diverse drivers across climatic, conflict, socioeconomic, agricultural, and contextual dimensions (i.e., mitigating factors, adaptive capacity). The framework offers a holistic perspective on compound risk assessment by drawing on comprehensive data sources, FEWS NET analyses, and employing advanced techniques, such as natural language processing, digital platform monitoring and supervised machine learning algorithms. The geographic focus of this report is three fragile and conflict-prone countries: Mozambique, Haiti and Ghana.

Minoarivelo, O.H.; Craparo, A.; Basel, A.M.; Nguyen, K.T.; Ouedraogo, Y.; Douglas, W.; Melly, B.; Dao, H.; Carneiro, B.; Pacillo, G.; Laderach, P.