The 2008 global food crisis caught everyone by surprise, since it emerged from a complex web of factors in a way that is exceedingly difficult to predict. This issue brief by the World Resources Institute reviews the myriad of influences that brought about the food crisis, and how climate variability acted as an important trigger. It analyses the food crisis through a complexity perspective, and reviews coping strategies and adaptive capacities of vulnerable groups, before using this research to recommend a set of policy recommendations.
The paper begins by charting the chain of events that led to the 2008 food crisis through multiple scales, highlighting how global influences filter down to the local level in a cascade effect. There is then an examination of the ways in which households are impacted, including migration and poverty dynamics. Individual and collective outcomes, adaptation strategies, the role of safety nets, risk governance, and fragile states are also discussed.
The authors draw four categories of policy conclusions from the analysis:
Vulnerability observation systems: There is a need for more longitudinal data, and regular updating of data, in order to observe trends as they unfold. The global spread of IT presents new opportunities such as automated tracking, internet 'mining', and the crowd-sourcing of data, offering the opportunity to detect early threat indicators by combining social, economic, epidemiological, ecological, and sector data.
Safety nets: Governments of developing countries must design safety nets which are broad in scope, resilient to disaster impacts, disaggregated according to vulnerability and gender, nationally owned and funded, and grant secure access to natural resources to the rural poor. Here there is ample opportunity for South-South knowledge transfer.
Supporting adaptive capacity: mobility, diversification, and market exchange are shown to be vital to households adaptive capacity. These are achievable through enabling policies, but require broad access to education, information, good health, secured rights, and freedom of assembly.
Risk governance: various policies can be employed such as inventories of risk, assessment and mitigation procedures in planning and public investment, insurance, decentralisation of responsibility and resources, and fostering partnerships with private and civil spheres. Additionally, the international community must continue to aid high-risk, low-capacity countries.