RUI: Coping with Food and Water Insecurity: Vulnerability and Resilience of Small Farmers to Environmental Hazards

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This project will develop an integrated assessment of smallholders' food and water insecurity and analyze the factors that contribute to livelihood resilience in the context of multiple hazards. In spite of their significant contributions to food supplies and resource conservation, smallholders constitute a substantial portion of the world's food insecure population. This study focuses on the coffee-growing regions of northern Nicaragua as a case in point, where a rapidly spreading coffee pathogen (coffee leaf rust), drought, and sharp increases in food prices for several staples threaten a humanitarian crisis, while the region continues its slow recovery from decades of violent conflict and prepares for the effects of climate change. The analysis will incorporate data that will be collected from household-level surveys and interviews, governmental and non-governmental organizations, biophysical measurements, GIS (geographic information systems) mapping and analysis, and climate modeling to identify what factors strengthen smallholders' food and water security. The findings will inform global efforts to link climate adaption and disaster risk reduction with sustainable development, and have particular relevance for Latin American producers as well as the coffee industry in the United States.This study uses a livelihoods perspective to examine both food and water security within an entitlement and capabilities framework. The interdisciplinary research team will involve faculty, local residents, and underrepresented undergraduate students in a participatory process that uses focus groups, interviews, and community-based water resource monitoring to develop household-level survey tools for an integrated assessment of food and water access and responses to past and present hazards. Using a nested scales approach, longitudinal survey results will be integrated with quantitative, qualitative, and geospatial data on household coping experiences, gendered responses, local institutions, markets, international development assistance, the extent of the coffee leaf rust outbreak, variability in precipitation and water availability, and downscaled models of future climate projections. Exploiting this rich data set, the team will combine qualitative results and regression models to analyze (1) the relationships linking farmer food insecurity and water insecurity to vulnerability and livelihood resilience; (2) the relationships connecting hydro-climatic variability with the coffee leaf rust outbreak and livelihood vulnerability; and (3) the determinants of household vulnerability as well as the adaptations, food and water systems, and institutions that are more likely to advance smallholder' livelihood resilience. This project will generate new methods for the integrated evaluation of household food and water insecurities that are linked to local waterscapes, climatic conditions, livelihoods, and institutions, and will inform broader theories of vulnerability and resilience in the context of risk from global change.