Using Microworlds for Resilience Management of Food Systems

Food systems are socio-ecological systems in which a variety of stakeholders interact through a wide range of activities such as production, packaging, selling and consumption of food (Ericksen, 2008). The objectives for food systems include long-term sustainability of food security and social and environmental outcomes (Ericksen, 2008). A prerequisite for long-term sustainability is the capacity of a system to maintain its functionality without compromising its ability to do so in the future. There is an increased awareness of the vulnerabilities of food systems to changes in the environment like those introduced by climate change (e.g. water scarcity, weather variability) Socio-ecological resilience is essentially understood as a system ability to maintain its functionality even when it is being affected by a disturbance (Folke Holling, While sustainability provides a framework for long-term planning, resilience focuses on adaptive mechanisms that will support a system ’ s functionality in the medium and long-term future. The emphasis on adaptive mechanisms to unpredictable changes has made resilience a compelling forward-looking approach to adaptation (Berkes and Jolly, 2001; Pizzo, 2015). While resilience is a characteristic of the system, resilience management is the active modification of a system with the explicit aim improve its capacity to absorb and adapt to change (Nettier et 2017; Fath Walker These capacities depend on the way the system has been organised and, therefore, resilience management is interested in understanding such organisation and identifying more effective ways for structuring the system. resilience