Climate resilience and food security in Central America: a practical framework

Abstract

This article introduces and tests a framework that applies a systems perspective to food security with an assessment of the food system's resilience in the context of climate change. The framework was applied in 20 communities in Honduras and Nicaragua. Our results indicate that contributions from supporting systems, institutions and processes are crucial to ensure overall food system resilience and critical food utilization and access dimensions. These systems include natural resources and their management and critical infrastructure (transport, power, communications, storage, etc.) along with key institutional policies and processes for participation in decision-making. To improve resilience in food systems, it is important to increase household and community subsistence, local markets and food storage in accessing key staple items for good nutrition. At the same time, institutions must be strengthened to build capacities and monitor trends in food security, health and disease, and emergency preparedness. The framework helped to reveal the dependence of community food security, and especially food utilization and access, on decisions at the regional and national levels, beyond the direct control of the communities. Finally, users stressed the usefulness of the framework in structuring complex interactions of resilience features across different dimensions of the food system, which later could be used to inform local and regional decision- and policy-makers.