Strategic Directions for Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping in the 21st Century: Examples from Bangladesh

The beginning of the 21st century provides a suitable milestone to review lessons from the past and set a new course for the future of Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping(VAM) for the World Food Programme (WFP) and its Partners. The new strategy outlined below maximises the opportunities provided by the WFP Policy Document, 'Enabling Development' (119) and WFP’s emphasis on 'Intergenerational Hunger' in 'The Hunger Trap'(110). This new strategy seeks to 'leapfrog' the new VAM Unit in WFP Bangladesh from its early lead in vulnerability analysis and mapping a quarter century ago, to a new analytical level in support of WFP’s Bangladesh Country Strategy Outline 2001-2005 (117). In so doing it seeks to lay out some strategic directions for new VAM units in other WFP country programs. In the past WFP VAM in Rome and other Country Offices have borrowed from, and then gone beyond, the Bangladesh experience. As this document seeks to support a ten year development plan for the ultra poor, this VAM strategy should enable other VAM units internationally to support country strategies beyond 2005. This strategy document is developed upon: (i) the experience of vulnerable women living in high risk marginal areas; (ii) the institutional analysis of VAM Bangladesh, from the progressive staff of the WFP Bangladesh Country Office, and (iii) the author's 25 years of experience of vulnerability analysis and mapping in Asia and Africa. The SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis of WFP-VAM Bangladesh forming Part II of this strategy document revealed the need for a radical rethinking of the road ahead. Incrementalism from the progress at the end of the 20th Century will not be sufficient to meet the challenges of VAM with accelerated globalisation in the 21st century.