Local practices and production confer resilience to rural Pacific food systems during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Resilience of food systems is key to ensuring food security through crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic presents an unprecedented shock that reveals varying levels of resilience of increasingly interconnected food systems across the globe. We contribute to the ongoing debate about whether increased connectivity reduces or enhances resilience in the context of rural Pacific food systems, while examining how communities have adapted to the global shocks associated with the pandemic to ensure food security. We conducted 609 interviews across 199 coastal villages from May to October 2020 in Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Tuvalu to understand community-level impacts and adaptations during the first 5–10 months of the COVID-19 crisis. We found that local food production practices and food sharing conferred resilience, and that imported foods could aid or inhibit resilience. Communities in countries more reliant on imports were almost twice as likely to report food insecurity compared to those least reliant. However, in places dealing with a concurrent cyclone, local food systems were impaired, and imported foods proved critical. Our findings suggest that policy in the Pacific should bolster sustainable local food production and practices. Pacific states should avoid becoming overly reliant on food imports, while having measures in place to support food security after disasters, supplementing locally produced and preserved foods with imported foods when necessary. Developing policies that promote resilient food systems can help prepare communities for future shocks, including those anticipated with climate change.

Fish catch responses to Covid-19 disease curfews dependent on compliance, fisheries management, and environmental contexts

“…In Indonesia, marine catches reported a rapid decline of fishing effort, traders, and fish prices, but many fishers returned, caught more fish, and maintained their incomes [4] . The degree of reliance on local versus imported food and sharing among households influenced the social resilience to curfews in Pacific fisheries [11] , [2] . Some artisanal fisheries in Africa showed low compliance to government curfews and high crowding at local landing sites (Okyere et al 2021; [12] ).…”

Review of adaptations of U.S. Commercial Fisheries in response to the COVID‐19 pandemic using the Resist‐Accept‐Direct (RAD) framework

“…This could be a missed opportunity to actively promote an emerging business model built on new technologies and forms of social engagement that strengthen social and solidarity networks. These additional economic models could provide redundancy in the system and provide local independence from global systems in the face of potential future disruptions to global markets, as has been observed in other studies (Ferguson et al, 2022 ).…”

“…We used the RAD framework to better understand the extent to which fishery adaptations to social changes stemming from COVID‐19 might represent an opportunity to either prevent or guide system transformation following an unprecedented SES social disturbance. Facilitating such adaptations may become increasingly necessary if large‐scale social disturbances become more common, as has been suggested is likely under current climate trajectories (Buma & Schultz, 2020 ; Ferguson et al, 2022 ).…”

Evaluating the Feasibility of Sustainable Seafood Labelling Programmes in Small Island Developing States: A Pilot Study of Artisanal Fisheries in Seychelles

“…Moreover, fishers are already accustomed to threemonth gaps in fishing, given the Seychelles' monsoon patterns. As such, the impacts of COVID-19 on fishers in island nations such as Seychelles may have been relatively minimal (Ferguson et al, 2022), and we observed several responses to this question that were more representative of all the changes fishers have had to make because of previous events over the past 20-30 years. We therefore stress the importance of critically evaluating survey questions and responses via pilot studies and making adaptive changes in survey phrasing and delivery to better capture targeted information.…”