Annual progress report - 2003 (pdf format) - Policy Studies Institute

PROJECT PROGRESS REPORT
Programme Name
Project Title
Award No
Award Holder(s)
: Environment and Human Behaviour New Opportunities Programme
: Integrating social vulnerability into research on food systems and global
change
: RES-221-25-0039
: Mr John Ingram and Dr Tom Downing
Period of Report : 1.4.2003 to 31.12.2003
Institution(s)
: CEH Wallingford & Stockholm Environment Institute
Total ESRC Award : £38323.39
Total co-funding
: n/a
Aims and Methods of Research:
The research aim is to enhance understanding of how concepts of vulnerability of social aspects of
food systems to global environmental change can be integrated with concepts from natural science to
provide a more holistic approach to vulnerability studies. The specific objective is to review methods
for investigating the vulnerability of human food systems to global change.
Specific research aims are to:
1. Evaluate and refine a framework for undertaking the review.
2. Use this revised framework to review methodologies for determining present vulnerability of
socio-economic systems to global environmental change.
3. Evaluate the prospects for using existing methods for assessing current vulnerability (from
Objective 2) for assessing future vulnerabilities based on integrated scenarios of global
environmental change.
4. Help in devising a research agenda for further developing and applying methodologies aimed at
integrating socioeconomic and biophysical approaches to vulnerability.
Confirmation Statement:
We confirm that research is being conducted as anticipated in the initial contract with ESRC. The
literature review that is now complete and the methodological review is under way. We have made
consistent contributions to both the Environment and Behaviour Programme and the GECAFS
project.
Highlights of the Research and Important Findings:
The highlights of the research (conducted between January 2003 and January 2004) and important
findings fall into the area of vulnerability and food systems theory. The first important finding is that
vulnerability, in the context of climate change, entails two simultaneous modes: a general mode in the
sense that we are all vulnerable, and a particular mode in the sense that different groups in society are
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differentially at risk from different threats to their livelihood. This theoretical development achieves
two aims: first, it illustrates the necessary connections across scale between factors contributing to
environmental change; two, it brings vulnerability theory in the context of climate change in line with
the far more progressive theorization of vulnerability that has been achieved in the field of hazards
research.
Building on this theoretical development of a narrative approach to climate change vulnerability we
were led to examine how this affected analysis of food systems vulnerability in the context of
environmental change. This led us to recognize that a food system as such is immensely difficult
phenomenon to describe, both conceptually and practically.
i) Conceptually, the most difficult problem is how to ‘frame’ a system: that is, what elements of the
process of food production, distribution and consumption should be included for analysis and which
one left out. We worked through Michel Callon’s (1997) application of Actor Network Theory – as
applied to the market – to illustrate this problem. This also brings up issues of spatial and temporal
scale. A secondary problem is how to connect a food system, once framed, with a livelihood system,
once defined.
ii) Practically, the most difficult problem concerns methods for analysing food systems vulnerability
at the regional scale. This is because so many externalities, apart from ‘global environmental change’
determine a food system and vulnerabilities within it. This issue was raised by Terry Cannon through
the distinction he made between food security and a ‘food systems and livelihoods’ approach [where
he sought] to address hunger as an issue of livelihood (or entitlements) security, rather than food
security (2002). One key determinant of vulnerability concerns the machinations of the market and
exchange. In our analysis of food systems we did not wholly accept Cannon’s (2002) typology –
where a food system comprised of production, exchange, distribution and consumption. We believe
that aspects of exchange or market factors apply throughout the entire circular process of food
production, distribution and consumption and are determining aspects of access and availability. This
seems more robust and realistic development of Sen’s (1981) analysis of hunger and entitlement.
Social vulnerability, more often than not, is determined by the capacity of people locally to purchase
food on the market. The market is complicated by a number of factors, including fluctuating
commodity prices and local currency values. This means that a local ‘food system’ analysis needs to
incorporate market constraints and options for local adaptation as part of an integrated approach to
climate change vulnerability. Short-term, snap-shot assessments are of little value. What is probably
of more value is to assess adaptive capacity and various forms of empowerment at the local scale in
order to determine where the greatest degree of vulnerability might exist. This reinforces the
importance of the ‘livelihood security’ approach.
Thus, we believe further development of useful typologies of vulnerable food systems must be rooted
in nature-society theory that describes the nature of the boundaries and framings of food systems, that
develop a language of the nature of systems behaviour rather than its static qualities, and that
incorporates the differential vulnerability and adaptive responses of actors within socio-institutional
networks.
Changes to Original Award:
The original award is still a relevant planning guide. In consultation with the GECAFS project, we
have refined our deliverables as an extensive monograph on vulnerability theory (itself framed as an
article for an academic journal) and a working paper that brings together the analysis of specific
methodological issues and proposes a way forward for the GECAFS applications (and other field
work).
Research Staff:
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At the SEI, Stuart Franklin has led the project in close collaboration with Tom Downing, and
contributions from Gina Ziervogel, Sukaina Bharwani, and Cindy Warwick.
Publications:
“Towards a narrative theory of climate change vulnerability”. Peer-reviewed paper in process and to
be given at the Association of American Geographers convention in March 2004.
Engagement with potential Research Users (outside the academic community):
There have been several formal and informal contacts with potential user groups outside academia.
These fall broadly into three categories:
Policymakers: In addition to improving understanding of the concepts of vulnerability in its own
right, the research described above is an important contribution to the GECAFS project. In that this is
aimed at developing improved policy formulation for reducing the vulnerability of food systems to
GEC, contact with a range of policy makers and other involved in the policy formulation process has
been a key component. Presentations of latest thinking have been made to national stakeholder groups
in the Indo-Gangetic Plain, to CARICOM in the Caribbean and to SADC and NEPAD in Southern
Africa. Feedback on information needs has helped guide the research process.
Development agencies: A number of bi-lateral development agencies have expressed interest in the
research results. Presentations to UK-DFID and USAID have been followed-up with off-line
discussions about how best to integrate this type of conceptual research with other research in
development issues.
International research programmes: The UN-FAO and CGIAR are both interested in food system
vulnerability research, and contacts with these bodies are being strengthened as the research comes to
a conclusion. Formal collaboration on the definitions and typologies of food systems, and the role
vulnerability plays in them, is already underway.
Future plans include approaching other national and international funding bodies (in addition to
ESRC) for follow-up funds for developing field work on the principles established by this research;
and for further refining the integration of concepts of vulnerability in collaboration with the
Resilience Alliance (http://www.resalliance.org/ev_en.php).
Contribution to Programme:
This project is the only funded work in the Environment and Human Behaviour programme
addressing food systems—one of its major themes. However, the project has explored linkages
beyond our immediate concern and participated in several of the EHB workshops. The fresh review of
the grounding of vulnerability approaches in nature-society theory is relevant to many of the other
EHB projects, albeit that few of them have focussed explicitly on such theory. The development of a
more robust vulnerability framework and methodology is particularly relevant to the assessments of
the potential impacts of rapid climate change on the UK, perhaps an extreme test for methodology.
Detailed Progress:
Literature Review: Research developed initially through a literature review of all the issues
surrounding vulnerability and environmental change. This moved into further theoretical research on
resilience theory, on adaptation theory, on development theory, on Actor Network Theory, on
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entitlement theory, on the theory of human need, on theories of distributive justice and social
perspective, and on theories of spatial scale. Research into food systems vulnerability began with an
assessment of the work of Amartya Sen and the politics of hunger. The practice of famine early
warning systems, food storage and consumption smoothing were analysed through several case
studies, in both an urban and rural context, many of them conducted by FAO and IFPRI. This led to
research into theories of political ecology and thus into theories of food and development outlined by
Piers Blaikie and Michael Watts. A vulnerability briefing paper was written, together with a
schematic diagram explaining certain aspects of it, at an early stage in the research.
‘Endnote’ archive: The culmination of the literature review has been a comprehensive ‘Endnote’
archive of clearly defined, key-worded and annotated references to all the reference works that have
been assessed. This amounts now to some 1500 annotated references. The bibliography will be posted
on the Vulnerability Net web site (www.vulnerabilitynet.org).
Methods briefs: Methods papers were written on (i) vulnerability analysis, (ii) political ecology as a
mode of analysis, (iii) resilience theory and (iv) multi-agent approaches. It was seen that adaptation
was a subset of resilience and resilience the antithesis of vulnerability. A briefing note on ecological
economics was proposed but has not been completed. The briefs served as the background to a
working session on GECAFS methodology and will be revised in 2004.
Monograph: A monograph of some 8000 words is being completed and at the same time prepared for
publication. This will be completed during February 2004. The abstract reads as follows:
“This paper argues for a theoretical reassessment of climate change vulnerability.
Established analyses of vulnerability have tended to be descriptive, in the sense that they
have sought to describe either human or environmental proneness to harm or the capacity
to resist, adapt or cope with climate change or natural hazards (IPCC 2001; Leichenko
and O'Brien 2002). I argue that there is a need for a narrative theory of climate change
vulnerability where connections – both material and conceptual pathways – can be traced
between the facts of proneness to harm and the processes that are implied in their
replication. In a recent appraisal of the discourse of global warming, David Demeritt
(2003) critiques the mystification of the scalar definition ‘global’. Demeritt argues that
the evenness or uniformity implied by the term ‘global’ warming obscures the
unevenness of inputs, in terms of greenhouse gases (GHGs), and the differential
experience of those who are affected by climatic change in particular ways. This paper
develops this analysis to consider climate change vulnerability as both a general and
particular phenomenon: general in the sense that we are all vulnerable to climate
change; particular in the sense that some people, regions or ecosystems are more
vulnerable than others. This is exemplified by an analysis of how food systems, and
particularly the access and availability to nutritious food, might be differentially affected
by global environmental change.”
Next steps: The next steps involve assessing the routes forward from theory to practice. This will
involve examining modes framing food systems that take into consideration market structures,
commodity prices fluctuations, as well as adaptation to biophysical influences of climate change.
Building a further research agenda involves decisions about budgets for research and a notion of the
regions where further research might take place.
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