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When one crisis comes after another: successive shocks, food insecurity, and coastal precarity in the Philippines

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The succession of shocks—sudden social and environmental crises, whether they be episodic or erratic, such as extreme weather events, pandemics, and economic recessions—has dire consequences on the ability of people, especially the vulnerable and precarious, to secure safe, nutritious, and culturally appropriate foods. While the scholarship on multiple shocks and stressors is increasingly recognized in the academic literature, there remains a dearth in scholarship that critically interrogates the impacts of successive and overlapping shocks on the various dimensions and temporalities of food security. In this paper, we adapt the double exposure framework to examine how a triad of shocks—a catastrophic typhoon, the COVID-19 pandemic, and high economic inflation—has led to varying magnitudes of transitory and chronic food insecurity among the fisherfolk in coastal communities in Capiz, the Philippines. Drawing from field research, we illustrate that the succession of shocks induced a decline in household incomes, an escalation of dependence on credit, and the consequential accumulation of debt among the fisherfolk. Credit and debt have allowed the fisherfolk to sustain meal frequency to some extent during periods of high vulnerability, but the succession of shocks continued to aggravate their lack of access to nutritious food. Looming in the background is the gradual crisis of declining fish stocks, which may exacerbate the impacts of successive shocks in the future.
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Vol.:(0123456789)
Agriculture and Human Values
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-024-10627-7
SYMPOSIUM/SPECIAL ISSUE
When one crisis comes afteranother: successive shocks, food
insecurity, andcoastal precarity inthePhilippines
AnacoritaO.Abasolo1 · MarvinJosephF.Montefrio2
Accepted: 5 August 2024
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2024
Abstract
The succession of shocks—sudden social and environmental crises, whether they be episodic or erratic, such as extreme
weather events, pandemics, and economic recessions—has dire consequences on the ability of people, especially the vulner-
able and precarious, to secure safe, nutritious, and culturally appropriate foods. While the scholarship on multiple shocks
and stressors is increasingly recognized in the academic literature, there remains a dearth in scholarship that critically inter-
rogates the impacts of successive and overlapping shocks on the various dimensions and temporalities of food security. In this
paper, we adapt the double exposure framework to examine how a triad of shocks—a catastrophic typhoon, the COVID-19
pandemic, and high economic inflation—has led to varying magnitudes of transitory and chronic food insecurity among the
fisherfolk in coastal communities in Capiz, the Philippines. Drawing from field research, we illustrate that the succession of
shocks induced a decline in household incomes, an escalation of dependence on credit, and the consequential accumulation
of debt among the fisherfolk. Credit and debt have allowed the fisherfolk to sustain meal frequency to some extent during
periods of high vulnerability, but the succession of shocks continued to aggravate their lack of access to nutritious food.
Looming in the background is the gradual crisis of declining fish stocks, which may exacerbate the impacts of successive
shocks in the future.
Keywords COVID-19· Extreme weather· Inflation· Food shocks· Food insecurity· The Philippines
Introduction
Global climate change, pandemics, wars, and economic
recessions—these are just some of the major crises that
define our current moment. Because of the interconnected-
ness of the agriculture sector with energy and finance (Nay-
lor 2011), these crises become “shocks” (or “shock events”)
to global, regional, and local food systems—a phenomenon
commonly referred to as food supply chain or food system
shocks (Hamilton etal. 2020; Davis etal. 2021; FAO 2022).
While we are aware of the rising intensity and multiplicity
of crises, food and agriculture scholars have not paid enough
attention to the overlap and succession of crises and their
impacts on people’s lives.
This paper examines the layering and succession of
shocks and their variegated effects on the lives of especially
marginalized and vulnerable populations (see, for example,
Phillips etal. 2020 and Sultana 2021). Our focus is on the
food security implications of successive and overlapping
shocks, which remain an underexplored area of scholarship.
We put the literature on multiple stressors, most especially
the established double exposure framework (Leichenko and
O’Brien 2008), in conversation with the current scholarship
on food insecurity and precarity, and ask: how do food inse-
curity and precarity manifest in the context of successive and
overlapping shocks in poor coastal communities? How then
do vulnerable and precarious coastal populations negotiate
and navigate these circumstances?
We explore these questions by examining the fisherfolk in
Capiz, a province in the Western Visayas region of the Phil-
ippines that is frequently affected by typhoons. Capiz is an
exemplary case to study food security in the context of suc-
cessive and overlapping crises, as the province was impacted
* Anacorita O. Abasolo
aoabasolo@up.edu.ph
Marvin Joseph F. Montefrio
marvin.montefrio@yale-nus.edu.sg
1 University ofthePhilippines, LosBaños, Philippines
2 Yale-NUS College, Singapore, Singapore
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