Assessing the impact of hydrological extremes on food security from post-disaster reporting

Abstract

Climate change can potentially drive variations in the frequency and magnitude of hydrological extremes, and in turn, the impact these events have on agriculture. Agricultural damage resulting from extreme events can significantly affect food security at multiple scales, especially in contexts where pre-existing unfavorable social and economic conditions already hinder the stability and the effectiveness of the food supply chain. In these contexts, formulating approaches to directly quantify food security impacts of extreme events in a way that is compatible with local data availability, but at the same time reliable and transparent, becomes a crucial and urgent matter. Moreover, while the importance of the multifaceted repercussions of agricultural damage on food security has been highlighted in the current literature, investigations on impacts other than reduced crop availability remain understudied. Here, we propose a methodology to derive metrics of food availability, access, and utilization impacts from post-disaster assessments, by putting the affected communities at the core of the analysis, providing perspectives on food stability impacts. We apply the methodology to the severe floods that affected Malawi in the early months of 2015. We find that agricultural losses correspond to food sufficient for feeding more than 300,000 people and for balancing the diet of almost 2.3 million. Food security impacts also appear to disproportionately hit poorer and less food-secure districts. Despite necessary simplifications and associated limitations, the proposed methodology is easily replicable in other post-disaster contexts, allowing to provide more insightful information to policy and practice aimed at post-disaster food security management and restoration.