The current Southern African crisis has multiple and deep seated causes. Although the present response is largely founded on short-term emergency measures, the crisis is neither short-term nor one where livelihood provisioning measures will deal with any of the more complex causes. What the crisis does mark is an escalation of the annual numbers without adequate food and nutritional security in the region, a relentlessly spreading chronic insecurity, exacerbated by HIV/AIDs, shifting employment patterns, reduced government services, and political and climatic factors. CARE has developed a Discussion Paper on the food crisis in Lesotho, which identifies multiple causes and sets the "climatic shocks within … a significant longer term growth in the vulnerability of poor people in Lesotho". This paper supports an integrated response, combining humanitarian and development responses.
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CARE's characterisation of the causes of the current crisis is rooted in the long-term experience of its programmes and staff in this region. It is nevertheless largely a hypothetical analysis as there is limited data and detailed analysis to support it. By understanding the impacts of different shocks and stresses on livelihoods (such as droughts, retrenchment and chronic illness), and associated coping strategies developed by poor people, appropriate development responses be identified. During 2003, CARE is developing this analysis more fully, in order that a better understanding of livelihood trends and the key factors affecting these trends, can be used to develop more appropriate, longer term mitigation and livelihood recovery strategies. Most critically, CARE wishes to use the investments being made into vulnerability assessment and surveillance work to develop a better analysis of current livelihood and nutritional status trends. This then needs to be allied with historical research, placing the current trends into a better historical perspective, as well as better rural economic research that looks at trends with regards to crop and livestock pricing, as well as food prices and piecework labour rates.

The primary objectives of the research are:

1. To understand long-term livelihood trends and coping strategies, and to locate these trends within a macro context, in at least two of the countries affected by the southern African food crisis (primarily Lesotho and Malawi).
2. To identify the underlying causes of livelihood vulnerability and the regional food crisis, linking micro, meso and macro (national, regional, international) analyses.
3. To use the research to contribute to the development of livelihood recovery strategies in the Southern African region.
4. To inform and influence key government and donor agendas that integrate long and short-term responses to the food crisis.