Building Community Resilience to Climate Shocks: Lessons from ENSURE in Zimbabwe

Resilience strategies underpin the work of many international development agencies and governmental and non-governmental agencies working in complex, fragile environments. While there are numerous definitions of resilience, nearly all relate to the capacity of individuals, communities, households, and states or countries to sustain progress toward development goals despite repeated shocks and stresses. In general, these agencies have adopted a framework that depicts resilience as three interconnected capacities: absorptive coping capacity, adaptive capacity, and transformative capacity.

This paper also uses the above resilience framework to examine ENSURE’s approach to building community resilience. It focuses on what ENSURE did and what it left behind in enhancing the community’s ability to reduce and mitigate shocks and stress through absorptive, adaptive and transformative capacity building for improved food security and livelihood. The findings and lessons learned from this experience contribute to ongoing efforts by various stakeholders and development partners in Zimbabwe who are supporting and engaging in building community and household resilience in different capacities.