How can countries prevent shocks and disasters from turning into food crises? Science points to Resilience
According to a new study, natural and human-made shocks do not have to lead to more hunger by default.
- Community engagement
- food crises
- food environment
- Food insecurity
- resilience
How can countries prevent shocks and disasters from turning into food crises? Science points to Resilience
According to a new study, natural and human-made shocks do not have to lead to more hunger by default.
Floods, wildfires, conflicts, earthquakes, economic shocks, hurricanes or epidemics; these unexpected and often dramatic events impact people’s lives and jobs, destroy crops, wipe out livestock and stored food, contaminate water, block roads, cut off communities and severely affect their access to markets and food. This picture is certainly a very distressing one—one that is expected to get much worse in the near future due to climate change and an increasingly polarized world. Yet, science says: No, these natural and human-made shocks do not have to lead to more hunger by default.
A new study, published in the prestigious scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), challenges our natural human tendency to think that everything will necessarily get worse after a shock. Instead, the study presents compelling empirical evidence that it is possible to break the link between shocks and food insecurity. The key element for this is RESILIENCE. In simple terms, resilience means the ability of people, communities, ecosystems (and food systems in this particular case study) to withstand disturbance and to continue functioning despite disasters and shocks.