Considering Ecosystem Services in Food System Resilience

The prevalence and severity of natural hazards pose a serious risk to food systems, undermining their function to provide food security and improved nutrition. The impact of such events is extensive, and the level of damage and recovery significantly depend on ecosystem services, including their own resilience capacity. This paper provides evidence that the role, value, and utilization of local ecosystem services are essential for food system resilience and for food security in parts of the world where high vulnerability and lack of coping capacity exist to combat climate change. Patterns of ecosystem services-based strategies were revealed that can be introduced to cope and adapt to climate-related natural hazards at the smallholder food system level. The study suggests that food system diversification, technological innovations and nature-based practices, and traditional and indigenous knowledge operationalized across the food system components have a potential for sustaining smallholder resilience in the face of natural hazards.