Drawing up a Problem and Solution Tree Exercise
You are now ready to draw up your own Problem and Solution trees:
Exercise : NUTRITION PROBLEM AND SOLUTION TREE
Draw up a Nutrition Problem Tree for the malnutrition problems in the area.
AIM: is to understand and discuss the main causes or potential causes of malnutrition in the defined area.
Drawing up problem and solution trees
From your research on Nutrition problems, you will have identified some information on the Nutrition problems and possible contributing factors related to the 3 main ‘Underlying Causes’ of Malnutrition: Insufficient Household Food Security, Inadequate Maternal and Child Care and Insufficient Health Services and Unhealthy Environment.
Drawing up the nutrition problem tree with the project community and local stakeholders using a participatory exercise will bring in local knowledge and increase understanding. This is particularly useful alongside the technical reports you have referenced and the information gained from Key Informants.
Your project will not necessarily be able to tackle all the causes of malnutrition alone, but in coordination with local services and other projects, you have the best chance of doing so. It is important to understand some of these issues at this stage to ensure that your project (or others in the area) address the main problems identified and there are no glaring gaps that mean nutrition problems will persist. It is also important that the process for understanding the nutrition problems is carried out in a participatory way with the project population being well represented.
We suggest drawing up a Nutrition Problem Tree and from this a Nutrition Solution Tree.
PARTICIPANTS: Project participants and project staff. Local representatives of local administration (e.g. agriculture, rural development, water management, public health, education, women and youth affairs), public and private sector and NGOs or CSOs. The important thing is to make sure that people who are influenced by, participate in or have some stake in the project are represented. Also that there is a gender, socio-economic and age spread of participants. If considered appropriate, this exercise may be carried out separately for different groups.
Building a problem tree to understand the causes of malnutrition. The causes are represented by the branches. These start with more proximal causes, such as poor health or insufficient quality diet and build to more distal causes such as poor rainfall.
Follow these steps
- Brainstorm all problems related to malnutrition for your specific area and identify what are the main malnutrition problems
- Write the problems on cards (one per card). Make sure that the problems are well defined.
- Keep asking ‘why’ for each problem to reach more distal causes. For example, why is there poor hygiene – because there is dirty water and poor hygiene knowledge.
- Cluster the cards by theme (e.g food security, care, health issues etc)
- Put cards into order with the proximal causes close to malnutrition and the distal causes further up the tree. Stick them onto the large piece of paper (start with the card ‘malnutrition’ at the bottom of the tree)
- Draw lines to show links between the different problems
- Once you have completed the Problem Tree, see if you can draw up a corresponding Solutions Tree.
Tips:
- Use the UNICEF causal framework as a starting point to the common causes of malnutrition.
- Identify the cause clearly- rather than ‘lack of education’ use ‘inappropriate awareness of feeding practices’ for example.
Example
How to use the data from your research to build up a problem tree
For example from a discussion with Malawi Schools Permaculture Clubs; Aranya, India; Fambzanai, Zimbabwe and Sustainable Village Resources, Kenya
What are the types of malnutrition in your location?
- Overnutrition (overweight and obesity)
- Overweight in children- chips nothing else in city
- Too much corn in rural area
- 5% Malawi overweight
- Diabetes is a problem that is developing in Malawi
- Undernutrition: Chronic/ stunting
- Poor diversity- little nutritional quality
- High in India
- 37% Malawi stunted
- Protein deficiency – Zimbabwe
- Carb rich protein poor – India
- Carb rich maize and cassava- Malawi
- Undernutrition: Wasting/ Acute (Moderate or Severe)
- Kwashiokor- too much starch –not enough protein (Kenya)
- Hungry gap Malawi, Kenya
- Micronutrient deficiencies
- Vitamin A deficiency
- Lack of diversity
- Possible iron deficiency – with iron rich beans being used as a solution
In summary, all forms of malnutrition are present in all the example countries. They may have common causes/ or contributing factors or particular causes for particular types of malnutrition.
Building up your problem tree
To start, choose one of the Nutrition problems and start asking the questions- why is this happening, why is that happening and so on, to find some basic causes.
Here is an example from Southern Africa that shows one branch of the problem tree. There will be other branches related to the other 2 underlying causes of malnutrition. Here the problems related to insufficient household food security have been explored.
- Identify your main Nutrition problem(s)
- Undernutrition, stunting
- Why is there this problem- identify the proximal causes (immediate)
- Monotonous diets high in carbohydrate low in protein
- Fish and ugali only are consumed
- Why is there this problem – identify underlying causes
- Maize, the staple crop is readily available, whereas other foods are not
- Mono-crop of staple- maize is considered as food security/ it is maize security
- Why is there this problem- identify basic causes
- Cultural practice and preferences for the staple food in diets
- Lack of income to buy diverse foods
- Lack of access to market for diverse foods
- Government and other organisations promote maize
- Government Input support programmes on maize and rice
- Companies sell chemicals and use NGOs to promote mono-culture
- Government is looking for export crops- subsidy to export
- Cash crops for export rather than food crops
Turning the problem tree into a solution tree
The problems identified above have been turned around to outcomes- or actions that could be taken to address the problem. Not all problems will be possible to turn into solutions- Note some of the basic causes that occur at the National Policy level are difficult for a small project to address.
- Identify your main Nutrition problem(s)
- Children are well nourished
- Why is there this problem- identify the proximal causes (immediate)
- Diets are diverse with staple and fish and other food groups such as fruit vegetables, legumes
- Why is there this problem – identify underlying causes
- A wide range of foods are available; diverse production is promoted
- The definition of food security includes a range of nutrient dense foods
- Why is there this problem- identify basic causes
- People value local foods and knowledge is improved on food preparation and traditional dishes
- Incomes are improved through income generating activities
- Markets for diverse foods are promoted
- Advocacy on the definition of food security and the importance of diverse production
- AREAS that the project may not be able to address directly
- Government Input support programmes on maize and rice
- Companies sell chemicals and use NGOs to promote mono-culture
- Government is looking for export crops- subsidy to export
- Cash crops for export rather than food crops
What did you learn from this exercise?
- You can now identify what your project is doing to address these problems and where are the gaps
- You will see where problems are outside the scope of your project and you can work with local or national partners
- You might see where you are making assumptions
- You will be able to draw out a theory of change for your project that is realistic and shows clearly what are your expected outcomes (more in a future lesson on that- see the Monitoring and Evaluation Section)