Deprived ofeffective safety nets and social protection systems, poor and food insecure people can neither invest inmore sustainable agricultural practices, nor even protect such modest resources as they have. They will instead resort to negative coping strategies, including overexploiting natural resources and further degrading the land. Two-thirds of people in Africa are estimated to be living on land that is degraded to some extent; globally, around a quarter of all land suitable for agriculture is degraded. As a result, every newdroughtorfloodfurther depletes people’s assets, trapping them in a spiral of diminishing resilience and environmental misery.

The World Food Programme (WFP) helps countries and the most vulnerable and food insecure communities manage natural resources sustainably. This enables them to meet today’s livelihood needs and safeguard these resources for future generations. Our interventions – involving soil conservation and fertility measures, water harvesting and flood control – bolster agro-ecological productivity and reduce the loss of biodiversity. We rehabilitate irrigation schemes and develop water sources for domestic use, for agriculture and aquaculture, and for livestock rearing; improve forestry and agroforestry management through afforestation, tree nurseries and seed collection; cut overgrown vegetation in abandoned and previously cultivated areas; and remove debris from agricultural areas after floods and landslides.

Access to clean water in arid and semi-arid contexts results in more diversified food, thereby complementing nutrition efforts. But as well as bringing communities closer to Zero Hunger, the restoration of degraded ecosystems boosts public health and reduces hardship in general. The availability of water and firewood closer to home, for example, reduces the need for women and girls to travel long distances to collect it – a common chore, which has been proved to expose them to harm.

Food Assistance for Assets (FFA) activities are closely integrated with related climate, smallholder and engineering activities, to ensure that assets such as rehabilitated feeder roads and bridges, schools, latrines, water reservoirs, market places, storage facilities and fuel efficient stoves all contribute to improved physical access to markets and services and improved access to energy. Where feasible and appropriate, under our FFA programme, we transfer the responsibility for carrying out these tasks to our beneficiaries themselves – in effect, assisting them to develop and manage their own assets. As they build up their own nutritional status and communal wellbeing over the long term, vulnerable households receive food and cash assistance to cover their immediate food needs.