Food security and climate change from a systems perspective: community case studies from Honduras

Abstract

Food security is described as a condition in which all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life (World Food Summit, 1996). Climate variability and climate change can affect all aspects of food security, but past impact assessments have focused primarily on agricultural production. Efficient responses require an understanding of the full spectrum of potential climate impacts on food utilization, access and availability, as well as on the underlying natural, built and governance systems. In this paper, we apply a broader systems approach to evaluating food systems resilience in the context of climate change (Bizikova, Tyler, Moench, Keller, & Echeverria, 2015) to 10 communities in Honduras. The results indicate that resilience building depends on a sound understanding of how communities access food and how climate impacts can cascade through different parts of the food system. Key support systems, such as natural resources, storage, transportation and energy have to be strengthened, and local governance has to be preserved and improved. These considerations should be integrated into the development and implementation of relevant policies and measures at different levels of decision-making.