Developing the NOMI framework for food and nutrition security in a climate-exposed delta: qualitative evidence from...

Conventional food and nutrition security frameworks often priorities availability and access but insufficiently capture lived experience, socioecological interactions, equity, adaptive capacity, and knowledge plurality in climate-exposed settings. This study develops the NOMI framework to analyse food and nutrition security in the Indian Sundarbans, a delta shaped by salinity intrusion, recurrent cyclones, livelihood precarity, and institutional fragmentation.

An exploratory qualitative study was conducted across six administrative blocks: Sagar, Namkhana, Kakdwip, Patharpratima, Gosaba, and Sandeshkhali II. Data comprised household interviews (n = 40), focus group discussions (n = 7), expert consultations (n = 5), and ethnographic field notes. Bengali interviews and discussions were audio-recorded with consent, transcribed verbatim, and analysed in ATLAS.ti using reflexive thematic analysis and abductive synthesis.

Ten thematic clusters showed that food and nutrition security is negotiated through rice-centred diets, seasonal monotony, limited animal-source foods, ecological degradation, institutional frictions, embodied stress, adaptive coping, gendered allocation, territorial marginalisation, and changing local foodways. Cross-theme synthesis produced four NOMI pillars: Nutrition as a Socioecological System, Observational Resilience, Multi-Lens Equity, and Inclusive Knowledge. These patterns were shaped by ecological stressors such as salinity intrusion, cyclones, and erosion, alongside fragile livelihoods and fuel and water constraints affecting utilisation. Households sustained food access through storage, substitution including wild foods, safety nets, livelihood diversification, and migration. However, vulnerability remained unevenly distributed. Women consistently ate last and least, while landless and island-based households faced compounded disadvantage. Traditional foodways supported resilience but were eroding and remained under-recognised.

NOMI provides a middle-range, mechanism-focused framework for climate-vulnerable coastal contexts. By foregrounding ecological feasibility, adaptive practice, structural inequity, and knowledge legitimacy, it can strengthen interpretation of performance and equity gaps in platforms such as ICDS, school meals, and the Public Distribution System, while supporting nutrition-sensitive One Health programming.