Food Policy 26 (2001) 229247

www.elsevier.com/locate/foodpol

Coming to terms with vulnerability: a critique

of the food security definition
a,* b
Maxx Dilley , Tanya E. Boudreau
a
University of Wisconsin, 432 North Lake Street, Madison, WI 53706, USA
b
The Food Economy Group, 1210 Stone Jug Road, Biglerville, PA 17307, USA

Received 20 March 2000; received in revised form 23 November 2000; accepted 6 December 2000

Abstract

This paper seeks to improve the practice of vulnerability assessment for food security pur-
poses by addressing long-standing issues that have hampered the development of both theory
and methods. In food security contexts, vulnerability is usually defined in relation to an out-
come, such as hunger, food insecurity or famine. This precludes employing the concept for
the more specific task of evaluating the susceptibility of a population to explicitly-identified
exogenous events or shocks that could lead to these outcomes. This lack of specificity has
clouded interpretation of causal factors of food insecurity and famine. Alternatively, in a
widely-applied framework for disaster risk assessment, the concept of vulnerability serves the
more specific purpose of identifying characteristics of population groups or other elements
that make them more or less susceptible to experiencing damage when exposed to particular
hazards or shocks. Risks of negative outcomes are created by the combination of hazards and
vulnerability, and vulnerability is defined by its relation to hazards rather than directly in
relation to the outcomes themselves. The result has been an easier and more transparent trans-
lation of concepts into practice. That this latter formulation can also be applied in the food
security context is illustrated through an analysis of food security risks in Tanzania. The analy-
sis identifies economic alternatives households can exercise to meet their minimum annual food
requirements. Exogenous threats or shocks that can suppress or eliminate particular alternatives
exercised by different groups are identified as a means of assessing households vulnerability
and consequently their risks of becoming food insecure, or falling below the minimum thres-
hold. 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Food security; Famine; Vulnerability; Risk

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-202-473-2533; fax: +1-202-522-3227.

E-mail address: mdilley@worldbank.org (M. Dilley).

0306-9192/01/$ - see front matter 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 3 0 6 - 9 1 9 2 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 4 6 - 4
230 M. Dilley, T.E. Boudreau / Food Policy 26 (2001) 229247

Introduction

For two decades, and particularly during the 1990s, authors and practitioners con-
cerned with vulnerability as related to food security and famine have engaged in a
lengthy attempt to define vulnerability and develop methods to measure it. Nonethe-
less, just what the term means and how it informs assessment methods remain
unclear. This murkiness inhibits conceptualization of real problems facing families
in food-insecure areas and hinders appropriate analysis for anticipating and address-
ing these problems.
Vulnerability has become a term of art and a basis for assessment methods
in several contexts, including climate impact analysis (Timmerman, 1981), disaster
management (UNDRO, 1979), and food security analysis (Chambers, 1989). In this
latter context the term has accumulated a wide variety of connotations (Longhurst,
1994).
This paper critiques the prevailing concept of vulnerability that has been developed
for food security applications by comparing it with an alternative formulation cur-
rently in widespread use for assessing risks of disaster.
Specifically, we seek to:

1. establish that there are fundamental differences between how the critical concepts
of vulnerability and risk have been defined in the food security context versus
elsewhere, specifically in the area of disaster risk assessment;
2. evaluate the current food security-related conception of vulnerability, exploring
intrinsic weaknesses that affect its usefulness; and
3. illustrate how the conceptual framework for understanding vulnerability and risk
currently in use for disaster risk assessment can be applied towards assessing food
security-related vulnerability and risk as well.

The focus of this paper is conceptual. Its intent is neither to specify parameters for
conducting food security analyses nor to critique nor promote specific vulnerability
assessment methods. Rather, its premise is that problem specification, rigorous evalu-
ation of methods, consensus on methodology, and an adequate basis for evaluating
the accuracy and credibility of individual assessments would be enhanced by clarify-
ing underlying concepts and resolving fundamental conceptual issues.
The American Heritage dictionary traces the word vulnerable to the Latin vul-
nerare, which means to wound. The broad definition, of susceptibility to being
wounded, is ambiguous, however, with respect to harmful incidents versus their
consequences. Is an army vulnerable to attack or to losing a battle? Is a smoker
vulnerable to the carcinogens in cigarettes or to cancer? Was the Greek hero Achilles
vulnerable to arrows or to limping? In order to develop formal methodologies for
measuring vulnerability in specific contexts it becomes necessary to be more precise
about exactly what the vulnerability is to (Blaikie et al., 1994).
In disaster management usages, the question, vulnerable to what? tends to be
answered by specifying an external hazard or threat that, if it acts on a vulnerable
entity, can lead to an undesirable outcome, that is, a disaster. In food-related contexts,
 M. Dilley, T.E. Boudreau / Food Policy 26 (2001) 229247 231

the question, vulnerable to what? is nearly universally answered famine, food

insecurity, or hunger, the undesirable outcomes themselves that vulnerable popu-
lations face.
This divergence occurred during the late 1980s and early 1990s when general
notions of vulnerability were refined for more specific analytical purposes. Authors
concerned with disaster management emphasized the terms value for identifying the
degree of damage that would be experienced by affected populations or economic
assets due to natural hazard events. Food security authors, on the other hand, con-
ceived of it as a measure of how far people had slid towards a state of food insecurity
or famine. This decision to define vulnerability directly in relation to an outcome,
rather than to exogenous causal factors leading to that outcome, has had broad-
ranging impacts on the food security discourse. On a practical level, lack of common
understanding about fundamental terms and concepts continues to spawn disagree-
ments over data requirements and the interpretation of vulnerability assessment
results.

Vulnerable to what?

In either the food security or disaster management contexts, vulnerability may

be simply shorthand for the propensity to experience harm during a crisis. More
specifically, however, vulnerability came to be used in both contexts to denote a
specific viewpoint that arose in the early 1980s, a reaction to a hazard-centric per-
spective on disaster causality during the 1970s exemplified by White (1974) and
Burton et al. (1993). This new viewpoint challenged the notion that droughts and
floods are principal causes of famine (Sen, 1981) and that natural hazards in general
are the principal causes of disasters (Hewitt, 1983). Vulnerability encapsulated a
growing recognition that the extent to which people suffer from calamities of any
kind depends on both their likelihood of being exposed to hazards or shocks and their
capacity to withstand them, which is related to their socio-economic circumstances.
Vulnerability was invoked to capture the socio-economic and political aspects of
causality that had been largely missing from pre-1980s literature. From these com-
mon origins, however, a fundamental divergence emerged between how conceptions
of the term vulnerability continued to develop within the general-disasters versus
the food-specific discourses.

The disasters literature

Critical concepts for disaster management and prevention such as hazards, vul-
nerability, and risk, were delineated and standardized at a United Nations work-
shop in 1979 (UNDRO, p. 5). Estimation of risk, rather than vulnerability, was ident-
ified as the desired overall analytical objective. Rather than being an independent
concept, vulnerability was understood as being contingent on a hazard event:

The threat posed by a natural hazard was expressed as the probability of occur-
232 M. Dilley, T.E. Boudreau / Food Policy 26 (2001) 229247

rence, within a specific period of time in a given area, of a potentially damaging

natural phenomenon.
Vulnerability was the degree of loss to a given element at risk or set of such
elements resulting from the occurrence of a natural phenomenon of a given magni-
tude and expressed on scale from 0 (no damage) to 1 (total loss).
Elements at risk might include the population, buildings and civil engineering
works, economic activities, public services, utilities and infrastructure, etcat risk
in a given area.
Specific risk was defined as the expected degree of loss due to a particular
natural phenomenon and as a function of both natural hazard and vulnerability
[emphasis added].

Consequently, In order to assess the disaster risk of an area, data on the following
categories are required: natural hazard, vulnerability, elements at risk (UNDRO,
1979: 8).
Relating the concepts of hazards, vulnerability, and risk in this way has sub-
sequently informed a useful and progressive discussion on the causes of disasters,
the information needed to assess disaster risks, and measures that can be taken to
intervene between those causal factors and their negative outcomes. What ultimately
emerged was a simple relationship, some variant of which is consistently encountered
in scholarly works (Maskrey, 1989; Blaikie et al., 1994), training manuals
(USAID/OFDA, 1997; Coburn et al., 1991a) and applications (Kreimer et al., 1999;
UNDP, 2000), in which disaster risk is some function of hazard and vulnerability,
or r=f(h, v).
In this conception, for any given elements at risk, the relationship between the
hazards to which they are exposed and their vulnerability to those specific hazards
is what creates risks of a specified negative outcome. Hazard events are characterized
in terms of magnitude, duration, location, timing and speed of onset (Burton et al.,
1993: 34). Risk is determined by quantifying the probability of a particular event,
identifying the elements at risk, and evaluating their vulnerability to that specific
hazard (Coburn et al., 1991a: 19).
Thus, exogenous risk factors (natural hazards or other potentially harmful events)
are distinguished from endogenous risk factors that constitute intrinsic vulnerability
of the exposed elements. Both sets of risk factors are considered causal factors.
Disaster prevention depends on this distinction, because:

For most of the risks associated with natural hazards, there is little or no opport-
unity to reduce the hazard. In these cases the focus of mitigation policies must
be on reducing the vulnerability of the elements and activities at risk (Coburn et
al., 1991b: 26).

If this mode of analysis were to be applied to food security risks it would seem to
have the additional advantage that exogenous political and economic hazards affect-
ing food security, unlike most natural hazards, might also be mitigatable through
policy interventions.
 M. Dilley, T.E. Boudreau / Food Policy 26 (2001) 229247 233

The famine/food security literature

In 1981, Sen challenged the then widely held conviction that lack of food avail-
ability (or supply) was the primary explanation for famines; instead, he posited lack
of access (or effective demand) as the key to understanding who went hungry and
why. Because access issues are entrenched in social, political and economic relations,
Sens work represented a clear shift in emphasis from natural to societal causes of
famine (Blaikie et al., 1994). Authors who sought to operationalize Sens ideas for
assessment and famine-prevention purposes began to invoke the word vulnerability
to refer to the complex web of socio-economic determinants outlined by Sen (see
Swift, 1989; Borton and Shoham, 1991; Maxwell and Frankenberger, 1992; Ribot,
1995; Middleton and OKeefe, 1998)1.
The effort to convert Sens analysis into assessment methods was launched in a
1989 issue of the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) bulletin devoted to the
topic of vulnerability. Noting that vulnerability lacks a developed theory and
accepted indicators and methods of measurement the bulletin was intended to pro-
vide ideas and material which should contribute towards developing these
(Chambers, 1989: 1). Subsequently, a lengthy methodological paper by Downing
was published in 1990 and republished in 1991 by the US Agency for International
Developments Famine Early Warning System (FEWS) project. The notion of vul-
nerability to famine articulated by Chambers (1989) and Swift (1989) and sub-
sequently reinforced by Downing, has been widely accepted in the food security
literature and in practical vulnerability assessment guidelines since.
The rationale for defining vulnerability in relation to an outcome (famine in this
case) rather than to hazards or shocks was stated unambiguously by Downing:

[V]ulnerability refers to a consequence, rather than a cause. Using vulnerability

in reference to a cause insinuates a negative consequence without completing the
reference. [E.g.] To assert that nations are vulnerable to drought implies a causal
linkage between drought and an unspecified negative impact (1991: 5).

Not only was vulnerability defined in relation to an outcome (rather than to events,
hazards, or shocks capable of triggering that outcome), but concepts critical for ident-
ifying crisis precursors carefully separated out into risk, hazard, and vulner-
ability for disaster risk assessment were amalgamated by Chambers into what
is currently the most widely cited food security-related definition of vulnerability:

Vulnerability here refers to exposure to contingencies and stress, and difficulty

in coping with them. Vulnerability thus has two sides: an external side of risks,
shocks and stress to which an individual or household is subject, and an internal

1
Interestingly, Sen himself (1981) used the term vulnerability very sparingly. When he did so it
was in reference to exogenous hazards or economic shocks.
234 M. Dilley, T.E. Boudreau / Food Policy 26 (2001) 229247

side which is defencelessness, meaning a lack of means to cope without damaging

loss (1989: 1).

This definition conflates exogenous risks2 and shocks with a populations intrin-
sic lack of ability to cope with them. And whereas vulnerability in the disaster
context is a dynamic, contingent concept reflecting a groups or other elements
ability to withstand specific exogenous shocks or threats, the intrinsic aspect of vul-
nerability in Chambers definition consists of a static state of categorical defenseless-
ness.
The 1989 IDS Bulletin on vulnerability and Downings subsequent FEWS techni-
cal paper have had lasting effects on the food security literature. Most authors accept
Swifts and Downings conception that people are vulnerable to outcomes, including
famine, food insecurity, hunger, starvation, loss of life, etc. (see Borton
and Shoham, 1991; Kelly, 1992; Blaikie et al., 1994; Webb et al., 1994; Anderson,
1995; Buchanan-Smith and Davies, 1995; Seyoum et al., 1995; Davies, 1996; de
Waal, 1997)3. Chambers definition is ubiquitously cited as a basis for discussions
of vulnerability in the context of famine and food security [see Jaspars and Shoham
(1999) and Young (1999) for recent examples]. Downings work in 1991 initiated
an on-going effort to convert the concept of vulnerability into assessment method-
ologies. This endeavor has been hampered, however, by the difficulty of applying
the concept as formulated towards identification of specific causal factors leading to
food insecurity or famine.

Critique

The large numbers of chronically undernourished people in the world today are
testimony to the food insecurity of many households. For many, the question of
negative outcomes becomes a matter of degree, as food insecurity leads to hunger,
malnutrition and when extreme and widespread food insecurity leads to a partial
collapse of the socio-economic order and excess mortality famine. At each stage,
however, to the extent possible, it is desirable to anticipate further negative outcomes
before they become crises and to understand the proximate causes with sufficient
accuracy to mobilize appropriate preventive efforts and timely remedies.
Toward this end, events must be identified that might result in negative outcomes.
Intrinsic characteristics of exposed groups of people must also be identified to deter-
mine who will be affected and to what degree. This makes it possible to know which
events are important to monitor in any given circumstances, which data should be
collected, and how to interpret the data for establishing the seriousness of the situ-
ation for those exposed. Preparing for the worst in every case is far too expensive,

2
Unlike in the disaster literature, Chambers and other food security authors tend to use risks when
referring to external events or hazards rather than to the likelihood and character of a particular outcome.
3
Exceptions, where vulnerability is used consistently in relation to shocks, as a component of food
security risks, include Sen (1981), Kochar (1995), and von Braun et al. (1998).
 M. Dilley, T.E. Boudreau / Food Policy 26 (2001) 229247 235

but failing to act preventively when large-scale crises actually materialize is costly
in both human and economic terms.
To serve these practical purposes, a set of basic conceptual building blocks is
needed that clarify the essential dimensions of the problem and bring the analytical
requirements into focus. These conceptual building blocks should be clear, unam-
biguous and specific enough to provide a basis for coherent discussion leading to
shared understanding and problem solving.
The following critique seeks to establish: 1) which conceptual elements are needed
in order to meaningfully assess who is likely to experience a negative food security
outcome and why; 2) clear, consistent terminology for expressing these concepts;
and 3) the consequences of failing to articulate clear concepts through consistent
terminology. A subsequent section illustrates how more precisely-defined concepts
and terms can be applied towards assessing food security risks.

Events and outcomes, probabilities and risks

Given the circumstances it is important to define our terms. First, food-related

crises, like any other, materialize through a process of change. As new events occur,
conditions may change such that people who were not previously food insecure or
hungry increasingly become so. To prevent negative outcomes it is necessary to
identify events that may lead to these outcomes before the outcome itself
materializes. Thus one key conceptual element required is a clear separation between
selected causal events and outcomes.
Second, a given event will not affect everyone in the same way, that is, a single
event can lead to different outcomes for different people and groups. A price
increase, for example, may be beneficial to sellers but harmful to buyers. When
seeking to prevent harmful consequences, therefore, it is first necessary to identify
which events could potentially harm which groups of people. Hence, another key
element is determining the susceptibility of groups of people to a specific event
or events.
Third, events that lead some groups toward increasing food insecurity occur with
different degrees of predictability. Thus, an additional requirement is to characterize
the likelihoods of key events and their magnitude, timing and duration.
Three concepts, therefore events, susceptibility to them, and the resulting out-
comes provide a framework for prevention and preparedness. So to devise analyti-
cal techniques to serve this purpose, terminology is needed corresponding to events
that can cause harm, susceptibility to specific events, and likelihood of an unde-
sirable outcome, based on the potential occurrence of harmful events and levels of
susceptibility to them among those likely to be exposed.
These concepts in fact underpin most current analytical approaches. They are
called various things, however, and inconsistent terminology has become a source
of confusion. More important than semantic considerations, however, is the degree
to which the integrity of these three distinct and fundamental concepts is maintained
or not through the use of terminology. The short-hand attribution of meaning facili-
tated by terminology, essential for intelligible discourse, becomes a liability when
236 M. Dilley, T.E. Boudreau / Food Policy 26 (2001) 229247

terms have multiple or compound meanings and are subject to widely differing
interpretations.
Outcome-oriented, non-contingent vulnerability
The three elements identified above provide criteria for evaluating the utility of
current concepts of vulnerability for food security assessment. The discussion below
is intended to highlight the importance of a sound conceptual foundation and to point
where conceptual tools appear insufficiently developed.
Defining vulnerability in relation to outcomes, rather than to events that can lead
to outcomes, could appear to be largely an issue of semantics. That is, it could be
claimed that risk in a disaster context is simply known in food security terms as
vulnerability, whereas hazards in disaster parlance are risks in food security
circles. There are significant differences in how key concepts are handled that are
independent of terminology, however, including with respect to differentiation
between cause and effect and between threats or hazards and susceptibility to them.
Chambers (1989) oft-cited outcome-oriented definition of vulnerability, for
example (Section 2) incorporates within it two categories of causal factors exter-
nal shocks on the one hand and susceptibility to them on the other. In the disaster
management context these are discrete, though related. Incorporating external shocks
as an integral element in this way preempts using the concept of vulnerability for
the more precise purpose of discriminating between and among shocks and evaluat-
ing how much of a threat they pose and under which circumstances. A second sig-
nificant aspect of this definition, moreover, is that rather than allowing for degrees
of susceptibility it ascribes to the vulnerable one absolute characteristic, defenseless-
ness. Whether verging on, or at a relatively safe distance from, the ultimate outcome
of damaging loss, by this definition the condition of vulnerability is a given but its
specific causes can remain ambiguous.
When vulnerability is defined in relation to exogenous factors or events, as it is
in disaster contexts, the task of the analyst is to identify which shocks (hazard events)
are likely, which groups or elements could be exposed, their varying degrees of
susceptibility and the likely results. Outcome-oriented vulnerability, on the other
hand, encompasses all causal factors but neither necessitates, nor provides the con-
ceptual tools for differentiating, categorizing and prioritizing them. In order to estab-
lish the causes, the analyst must work backwards, identifying a priori who and where
the vulnerable are, then embarking on an exploration of the factors responsible for
their vulnerability:
A vulnerability assessment should begin by answering the question: who is
vulnerable to famine [emphasis added]? This may not be a simple task the
domains and dimensions provide a basis for compiling a taxonomy of vulnerable
groups (described below). Once targeted groups have been identified, the dimen-
sions then form a framework for describing long-term vulnerability and monitor-
ing current conditions. [W]ith only four dimensions and four categories of vulner-
ability for each dimension, there are theoretically 256 (44) possible vulnerable
groups (Downing, 1991: 18).
 M. Dilley, T.E. Boudreau / Food Policy 26 (2001) 229247 237

This is the reverse of vulnerability assessment in disaster risk management, in

which the characteristics that make entities vulnerable are contingent the specification
of a particular hazard, and identification of who or what is vulnerable is an output,
rather than the starting point, of the analysis.
Ambiguity with respect to causality and non-contingent, a priori vulnerability lead
to a tendency to formulate vulnerability indices incorporating every conceivable
available variable from rainfall and vegetative vigor to health and nutrition data,
areas reported requiring food aid, migration, etc. (see Downing, 1991: 1416; Webb
et al., 1994) since any one of them could potentially be a causal factor or indicator
under certain circumstances. Furthermore, since virtually everyone is affected by
such a broad range of factors, virtually everyone becomes vulnerable:

The notion of vulnerability is conceptually straightforward. Every population

is vulnerable to an emergency. As already suggested, a whole set of economic,
institutional, social, and climatic variables both current and historical render
some populations more vulnerable to famine than others at any point in time
(Hutchinson, 1992: 10).

Virtually any variable could be a contributing factor; the list of indicators that
might be used to measure or suggest vulnerability is almost infinite (Hutchinson,
1992: 14). Cause and effect may be undifferentiated, as in reducing vulnerability
to drought and famine [emphasis added] (Anderson and Woodrow, 1991). Even
famines and emergencies, which would themselves seem to be outcomes, constitute
threats. The ambiguity created by extensive lists of variables intended to indicate
where groups of defenseless people fall on a non-metric vulnerability continuum can
create a circularity in which the outcome itself becomes the threat to which people
are vulnerable:

To be vulnerable is to exist with a likelihood that some kind of crisis may

occur that will damage ones health, life, or the property and resources on which
health and life depend. Everyone is, to some degree, vulnerable. (Anderson,
1995: 41)

In this conception, it is the crisis itself, regardless of its causes, that poses threats
to ones health and life. But if the value of a vulnerability assessment is to identify
factors that contribute to the development of crises before they occur, it defeats the
purpose to wait for the crisis to develop before seeing who will be negatively affec-
ted.
With everyone vulnerable to some degree, the task of the analyst is to identify
just how close to the edge any given group has slipped, although the edge may
be arbitrarily determined. The scale for measuring vulnerability can be relative, with
no minimum, no maximum, and no threshold. The analysis may be limited to judging
from year to year whether a specific group may have become more or less vulnerable
than it was before due to changing exogenous circumstances. Establishing the cir-
cumstances under which certain groups of people might be more vulnerable than
238 M. Dilley, T.E. Boudreau / Food Policy 26 (2001) 229247

others, and why, is a subjective judgment of the analyst rather than a theoretical
necessity.
When vulnerability is freed of contingency on specification of particular, concrete
threats, at one end of the spectrum, it can achieve the status of an independent
phenomenon in its own right:

Specifically, vulnerability is complex, dynamic, compounding and cumulative,

sometimes irreversible, and frequently impossible to contain. (Anderson, 1995:
53)

Alternatively it may become ethereal and elusive:

Assessing vulnerability is like trying to measure something that is not there. It

is an absence of security, basic needs, social protection, political power and coping
options that define the problem, making the search for a visible reference point
a difficult task [emphasis in the original]. (Webb and Harinarayan, 1999: 298)

In its most expansive form, it can be as vast as the eternal human condition:

Vulnerability is all about the context of human responses to potential suffering.

It is about a set of conditions that are worse than they should be and possibly
continuing to worsen. (Webb and Harinarayan, 1999: 301)

Rather than yielding a more precise concept of vulnerability for practical appli-
cation, further elaboration would seem to have widened the gap between theory and
practice. Lack of definition and circularity with respect to outcomes have clouded
distinctions between cause and effect. Discrete concepts have been mixed, such that
their value for distinguishing who is vulnerable, to what, and to what degree has
been compromised. These concerns are epistemological rather than semantical,
affecting the possibilities for effectively linking ideas with concrete problems affect-
ing real people.
Given these problems, it seems reasonable to place the burden of proof on the
decision, conscious or otherwise, to reinvent such key concepts as vulnerability and
risk rather than simply adapting them from an established, contemporary and
immediately-related framework already in use for disaster risk management. The
following example seeks to demonstrate that prevention of food-related crises can
be approached using standard risk management concepts.

Food security risk assessment: Tanzania, 1999

Food security analysis offers considerable latitude in terms of which outcomes

may be desirable to anticipate, which shocks or threats are relevant under particular
circumstances and how to group exposed people into appropriate and useful units
of analysis. Outcomes of interest can include household food insecurity, malnutrition
 M. Dilley, T.E. Boudreau / Food Policy 26 (2001) 229247 239

or famine. The unit of analysis can range from individuals and households to com-
munities, regions or countries. Matching these alternatives to particular analytical
and programmatic purposes is beyond the scope of this paper. Moreover, the intent
of the following example is not to prescribe how food security-related vulnerability
and risk assessments should be conducted. Rather it is to demonstrate how the con-
cepts of vulnerability and risk as developed for disaster risk management also apply
in the food security context. What is important in the example is not the particular
negative outcome specified, metric, nor units of analysis selected. Rather, it is the
fact that these things are specified and the value of doing so explicitly.
The example does not seek to comprehensively address the myriad interactions
that can lead to famine. The complexity of these interactions is undeniable, and this
example in no way purports to review the entire litany of hazards and shocks, nega-
tive outcomes and units of analysis that could be appropriate in one set of circum-
stances or another. In a causal chain with many links, a particular phenomenon that
is an outcome of one set of relationships can be a determinant in the next. Food
insecurity might be the outcome of interest to the planner of a rural development
program, whereas a nutritionist might regard food insecurity as a hazard to which
some individuals are physiologically vulnerable and therefore at risk of another out-
come, that is, malnutrition4. What we seek to establish here are the merits of
explicitly defining the outcome, elements at risk, threats, and the characteristics of
the elements that make them more or less susceptible to those threats.
Perhaps the most significant and explicit limitation of the illustration below is that,
while it identifies shocks that threaten households food security, and the character-
istics of households that make them more or less vulnerable to those shocks, it does
not explain why those households came to be vulnerable in the first place. The ques-
tion of why people are vulnerable requires a second level of analysis, in which
vulnerability, defined in contingent relationships with a set of hazards, is itself the
outcome of historical, social, political and economic developments that determine
who has sufficient access to the means for ensuring their own well-being and who
does not.
What must be emphasized is that this conceptual framework allows identification
of additional problems, outcomes, elements and causal factors not necessarily con-
sidered here that could be relevant under various circumstances. Finally, the intention
here is not to argue for a specific set of food security indicators or a particular way
of defining food security-related problems but rather to:

1. advance a positive example to complement the preceding critique;

2. illustrate the preceding abstract discussion with concrete examples that pertain
directly to food-related crises; and
3. show how the results of an analysis based on clearer articulation of basic concepts
has the potential to more effectively mobilize and inform early action to prevent
famine and nutritional emergencies.

4
Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for language clarifying the preceding points.
240 M. Dilley, T.E. Boudreau / Food Policy 26 (2001) 229247

Risk concepts in food security terms

The three basic concepts delineated earlier (Section 3.1) events, susceptibility
to them, and the resulting outcomes can provide a framework for prevention and
preparedness in the food security world as well. For the purposes of the following
discussion, events that can cause harm are called hazard events, shocks, or
shock factors; susceptibility to specific events is termed vulnerability; and the
likelihood of an undesirable outcome, based on the potential occurrence of harmful
events and susceptibility to them among those likely to be exposed we will call
risk of food shortage.
These concepts have natural disaster corollaries. Given an earthquake, vulner-
ability would be defined by the construction characteristics of buildings in the earth-
quake-prone area, and the risk of building collapse would be evaluated by calculating
the probability of an earthquake of a certain magnitude and duration combined with
an estimation of the structural damage that would result given that occurrence. Given
the particular need not to imply that lack of access to food is a direct function of
natural hazards, however, care must be taken in translating these concepts for use
in assessing food security and preventing food-related crises.
Hazards are typically thought of as macro-level events such as droughts, floods,
or even disease outbreaks or wars. While such hazards clearly affect food security,
understanding their relationship to food security requires specifying how their effects
are transmitted through the economic, social and physical systems through which
people obtain food. This requires disaggregating general hazard impacts into more
proximate and specific shock factors or causes. So, for example, a macro-scale socio-
economic change such as war must be translated into price and wage fluctuations
that have immediate effects on purchasing power and on how much food a household
can buy. Likewise, a natural hazard, such as drought, has to be broken down into
its varied immediate impacts on household economies crop failure or reduced
milk yields that will affect how much food a household can produce.
Hazard events threaten food security to the extent that associated shock factors
negatively affect household options for obtaining access to food sources (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. How hazard events translate into shock factors and shock factors affect food access.
 M. Dilley, T.E. Boudreau / Food Policy 26 (2001) 229247 241

For example, changes in crop production affect an agriculturalist more directly and
immediately than they do a pastoralist. Changes in livestock production will affect
a pastoralist more than an agriculturalist, and so on. It is precisely this relationship
between shock factor and access to food that determines the vulnerability of a popu-
lation group to particular shocks. In other words, vulnerability is a function of how
a particular population groups options for obtaining access to food are affected by
different shocks to which they are likely to be exposed and the characteristics of
those shocks with respect to magnitude, duration and timing. Thus, in this example
vulnerability is contingent on the specification of hazards or shocks, and it is this
relationship that determines a groups risk of food shortage given changing con-
ditions.
A prerequisite for determining risk is defining a scale against which to measure
an outcome. In this analysis the outcome is food shortage, which is shorthand for a
threshold representing minimum food requirements in calorie and nutritional terms.
Risk of food shortage is an assessment of how likely a household or group of house-
holds is to fall below 100% of its absolute food needs.
A household is food secure if it falls on or above the threshold of meeting 100%
of its food needs; it is more or less food secure as it moves above or below that
line (Fig. 2). The total potential for obtaining food, and therefore of achieving food
security, is the sum of the specific means, or options, a household has for gaining
access to different food sources in a typical year. A households food security is
measured by determining whether or not, by fully exercising the means at its dis-
posal, it has access to enough food during all seasons throughout most years. The
relationship between these options and different shock factors is what determines a

Fig. 2. Comparison of a (marginally) food secure household with one whose options for accessing food
sources do not permit it to fully meet minimum annual caloric intake requirements.
242 M. Dilley, T.E. Boudreau / Food Policy 26 (2001) 229247

households vulnerability. Therefore, defining and characterizing vulnerability

requires an adequate profile of rural household economies at an appropriate aggregate
level for measuring the consequences of defined shocks or economic problems.
Identification of likely destabilizing shocks, combined with information about their
relationship to household food sources, permits assessment of household food secur-
ity risks.
Even if the types, frequency and magnitudes of shocks remain relatively constant,
if households are able to diversify or increase their options for obtaining food, buffer
them against shocks that adversely affect or eliminate certain options, or better com-
pensate for the loss of one option by replacing it with another, they can reduce their
vulnerability by virtue of having rearranged their own intrinsic characteristics with
respect to exogenous factors that put them at risk. Supporting this process is the
essence of vulnerability reduction. Risk reduction comprises vulnerability reduction
as well as the possibility of making some shocks less frequent or damaging.

Case example: Tanzania, 1999

The following example is drawn from a 1999 assessment in Tanzania5. The objec-
tive of the assessment was to provide information about how population groups in
the study area normally gain access to food. This information was meant to provide
a basis for understanding these groups vulnerability to various shocks so that the
risk of food shortage for each group in the coming year could be established.
Information for measuring vulnerability was formulated into composite pictures
of households maximum access to food. Maximum access describes the total food
value of a set of food production and cash income options employed by typical
households in different geographic areas. For instance, if households rely on crop
production, milk/meat and labor sales to meet their annual food and cash require-
ments, maximum access for these households would be a representation of the
relative caloric contribution of crop production, livestock production (in the form of
milk and meat) and labor exchange (converted into food purchase). Maximum
access provides a standard measure for comparisons across geographic regions,
allowing comparative assessment of risk.
Fig. 3 presents the findings of the assessment in northern Tanzania, comparing
food security among poor households across six different geographically stratified
population groups, or food economy zones6. The results identify food access options
in each case and how important each is for assessing risks of food shortage. Each
option implies particular vulnerabilities to specific shock factors, indicating what

5
The baseline household food economy structures in this case study (the maximum access charts) are
derived from empirical data from a field assessment carried out by the Food Economy Group for Save
the Children FundUK in Tanzania from May to July, 1999. The shock imposed, total crop failure, is a
hypothetical example. For a more detailed description of this assessment method see Boudreau (1998).
6
Only poor households in each of the zones were chosen for this example because comparing across
six food economy zones and three different income groups would have been too complicated for illustra-
tive purposes.
 M. Dilley, T.E. Boudreau / Food Policy 26 (2001) 229247 243

Fig. 3. Comparison of food access options and food security across six regions in Arusha, Tanzania.

events need to be monitored. Because the relative importance of each is quantified,

the access options also provide a reference for judging the risk that a shock factor
presents to the populations food security.
The effects of a hypothetical drought and crop failure on actual options for
obtaining food (Fig. 4) provide a clear picture of why it is important to distinguish
between hazards or shocks (external risk factors) and vulnerability (internal risk
factors). The counter-intuitive finding that households in the richest of the six
zones (the Southern Pastoral zone, Fig. 4 far right) are more vulnerable to crop
failure than households in a poorer zone (such as the Northwest Pastoral zone to
its left) shows how the interaction between hazard events and vulnerability deter-

Fig. 4. Vulnerability to drought in Arusha, Tanzania.

244 M. Dilley, T.E. Boudreau / Food Policy 26 (2001) 229247

mines risk and demonstrates that vulnerability is not an independent, non-contingent

status. Likewise, the fourth richest households those in the Hanang/Babati zone
are more resilient to crop failure than their richer neighbors to the north in Karatu.
The value of the concept of vulnerability is precisely that it reveals that food security
risks do not rise and fall in relation to wealth alone.
Another important contribution of separating the concepts of hazards and vulner-
ability is that it allows an analyst to come up with a number of potential options for
preventing the worst-case outcomes. In this example, it is not possible to prevent
the hazard event drought but it may be possible to modify vulnerability to
the drought or respond in a timely and appropriate manner based on knowledge
about why a group is particularly vulnerable to this hazard. For instance, because
crop failure takes 50% of normal food income out of the total food-access budget
for poor households in the Eastern Zone, an appropriate level of food aid correspond-
ing to this loss might be planned. At the same time, one might consider means for
supporting other relevant income options, such as employment or petty trade through
market interventions. In addition, because gifts from neighboring relatives are crucial
to the food security of these poor households, it would be advisable to conduct
follow-up investigation to determine whether this years surplus in neighboring areas
is sufficient to cover the expected cumulative deficit in the Eastern Zone.
Furthermore, because households in the Eastern Zone are at considerably greater
overall risk of food shortage than the Northwest or Southern Pastoral Zones under
similar drought and crop-failure conditions, geographic resource allocation decisions
can be made based not on the relative impacts within each zone but rather on the
absolute risks that households in a given zone will fall below the minimum accept-
able threshold of food intake. So, for example, even though the percentage impact
of a crop failure in the Southern Pastoral Zone could be higher than in the Eastern
Zone, the Eastern Zone is clearly less absolutely food secure than they were prior
to the drought and therefore a priority candidate in the geographic targeting of long-
term assistance programs.
Finally, the understanding of exogenous and endogenous risk factors can be used
to identify information that could enable at-risk households to protect themselves.
Knowing which options are viable for households at risk, and giving them access
to relevant information such as on market prices or probable seasonal rainfall, shifts
the emphasis of early warning from informing external actors to informing affected
people in time for them to take preemptive action.
Applying the concepts of hazard, vulnerability and risk as in the above example
encourages intervention between specific identifiable proximate causes (such as loss
of livestock, or loss of crop income) and the likely consequences (household food
income falling below a specified minimum acceptable level). It also allows objective
assessment of food security risks and provides a basis for allocating resources to
bolster food security for those most at risk of becoming food insecure. Clear defi-
nition of the relationships between shock and vulnerability, cause and effect, and
consequent levels of overall food security risks, increases the potential for motivating
early, effective action for preventing food-related crises.
 M. Dilley, T.E. Boudreau / Food Policy 26 (2001) 229247 245

Summary and conclusions

The above discussion has sought to demonstrate that:

1. Although vulnerability has become a formal term of art, it has assumed diver-
gent connotations in different contexts.
2. One context, concerned with disasters, defines vulnerability in relation to hazards,
threats or shocks. These shocks, and vulnerability to them, respectively constitute
external and internal risk factors, the interaction of which contributes to a specified
outcome. In the food security context, on the other hand, vulnerability is defined
directly in relation to a negative outcome such as food insecurity, hunger or fam-
ine.
3. Consequences of the food security formulation include: lack of theoretical impera-
tive to link specific causal shock or threat factors with specific vulnerability fac-
tors, the need to make a priori identification of who is vulnerable before being
able to establish what threats they are vulnerable to, and unclear data requirements.
Consequently, vulnerability is used less coherently in the food security context
in general. This has contributed to difficulties in developing universally agreed-
upon assessment methods and analytical frameworks.
4. The general disaster formulation, on the other hand, assists in differentiating both
between causal factors and between specific causes and their effects. Monitoring
and even predicting causal factors can create opportunities for anticipating risks
of negative outcomes and preventing or preparing for them. By identifying both
the specific causal risk factors and the relative degree of risk, this formulation
informs the types of interventions, the locations, timing, target population and
level of effort that are indicated.

Practitioners may wish to consider applying the general disaster formulation in actual
situations to evaluate its relevance for program decision-making.
Clear and consistent definition and use of core concepts is a pre-requisite for
development of improved methodologies. Danger signals include:

1. the use of vulnerability in relation to consequences rather than to causal shock

factors (e.g., vulnerable to food insecurity);
2. lack of specificity in the definition of shocks or hazards;
3. lack of definition in the relationship between identified shocks and the intrinsic
characteristics of the units of analysis (elements at risk) that create vulnerability
to them; and
4. lack of a measurable and unambiguous outcome (a food security threshold, for
example) that allows risks to be at least qualitatively evaluated.

Avoiding these pitfalls creates opportunities for furthering discussion of which indi-
cators are most relevant for characterizing shocks, what are the critical thresholds
of these indicators, how appropriate units of analysis, outcomes and elements at risk
can be selected, what data is needed and how can it be obtained, by whom and so
246 M. Dilley, T.E. Boudreau / Food Policy 26 (2001) 229247

on. The creation of more understandable and transparent monitoring and warning
systems would not only promote earlier, more preventive food-related interventions,
but also contribute to the normalization and sustainability of the systems themselves.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge the following individuals who generously shared
their time and expertise by contributing comments, criticisms and dissenting view-
points on earlier drafts of this paper. Additional points were raised by three anony-
mous reviewers. This input led to substantial revision of the paper which significantly
improved its clarity and focus. Sincere thanks to Julius Holt, Mark Lawrence, Laura
Mitchell, Peter Morris, Frank Riely, John Seaman and William Wigton. The authors
are solely responsible for the views expressed.

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