A Closer Look | Sustainable Solutions in Times of Crisis

In the months and years following a crisis, long-term strategies are needed to support the affected areas. Different organizational bodies face these challenges in different ways, but many have reached the consensus that long-range, sustainable strategy is imperative in the recovery process.

The Hunger Project makes the case that mere aid distribution is not enough, claiming that: “Top-down, service-delivery approaches are not only too inefficient and inflexible to make a dent in world hunger, they actually undermine the most important resource — the creativity and self-reliance of hungry people themselves.”

Heifer International, likewise, promotes grassroots, long-term solutions: “After immediate needs… have been met, Heifer works within communities to empower disaster survivors with the economic means - such as livestock, training and other resources - to rebuild their families, their neighborhoods and their hope for sustainable futures.”

Beyond these two, other organizations including Action Against Hunger, CARE, and the UN Millennium Project, take a bottom-up approach, hoping to provide “long-term solutions for sustainable futures.” Relying on principles such as accountability, education and training, self-reliance, and gender equality, these organizations use context-specific solutions and training to build communities capable of feeding and sustaining themselves.

On the other hand, other organizations employ a top-down approach. The World Food Programme provides temporary aid in the hope that the community will then have more resources available to devote to creating infrastructure. Also approaching hunger from the top-down approach is USAID, which works to improve policy, technology, and trade. Finally, the “Right to Food” unit of the Food and Agricultural Organization promotes the access to food as a basic human right, encouraging governments to take the consequential action of securing that right.

Now, many of these organizations are taking on the food crisis, and both the bottom-up and top-down strategies are needed to address the full scope of the problem. Without bottom-up projects to enrich communities, the long-term viability of aid will be low. Without top-down projects to create infrastructure and good governance, the stability of the communities will suffer. Working together, these groups can find long-term, sustainable solutions to complicated issues like the food crisis.