Measuring Food System Resilience in the Peruvian Regions of Amazonas and San Martín

Food systems (FS), essential for maintaining nutrition and food security, are highly susceptible to hydrometeorological and geophysical risks. Disasters not only result in human loss but also give rise to numerous challenges, including heightened socio-economic vulnerability, loss of livelihood, slow recovery, food insecurity and poor nutrition. Assessing and promoting FS resilience is more significant because climate change may increase the size, frequency and probability of natural events that result in disasters. This work proposes the Food System Resilience Index (FoSyRI) as a tool for assessing the FS resilience at the local level by collecting data on four components: food production, transformation, consumption and recirculation. Following the systemic disaster resilience theory, the FoSyRI establishes a baseline from four essential resilience categories: (1) governance and financing, (2) preparation, (3) response and (4) recovery. In this study, the index was applied at the regional and local levels. Thus, methods included household surveys on food consumption and recirculation, as well as workshops with key stakeholders (regional and local authorities, institutions, commerce chambers, transport representatives, producer leaders and representatives of indigenous communities), which allowed for the collection of information regarding food production, transformation and recirculation. This first FoSyRI's application was applied in August-September 2023 in the Peruvian regions of Amazonas and San Martín, which are particularly vulnerable to suffering the effects of floods, earthquakes and landslides. Considering a scale from 0 to 5, the results show medium resilience levels for the regions, 2.02 in Amazonas and 1.87 in San Martín. As climate change may exacerbate the impacts of natural events that result in disasters, the need to build systemic FS resilience in such regions stands out in importance, mainly because this will help to reduce overexploitation of resources, environmental degradation, poverty, inequity, excessive malnutrition and, above all, food insecurity in Peru. In such a complex context, the results could help identify the FS components that need improvement and the resilience categories that could trigger a shift towards a more resilient state.