Systemic risk and compound vulnerability impact pathways of food insecurity in Somalia

This publication uses a systemic risk impact pathway (SRIP) model to gain data-driven insights on the drivers of systemic risk and the impacts on food insecurity in Somalia. By applying data on extreme weather and food insecure internally displaced populations from 2011 to 2019 researchers isolate different components of vulnerability and show how they compound and relate to systemic risk drivers. While some drivers of compound vulnerability are known on a normative level, there remains a critical gap on the relationship between drivers of vulnerability systemic risk, and food insecurity outcomes.

The main result can be summarized as follows: Environmental vulnerably driven by increasing extreme weather events combined with the impacts from and exposure to systemic risk drivers create an exceptional level of risk for food security and livelihoods in Somalia. Using open-source data sets and literature, the systemic risk impact pathways model shows how lags, structural breaks, and delays (i.e., systemic risk drivers) affect environmental, political, and socio-economic vulnerabilities on subnational level and can lead to food insecurity outcomes. Regarding these interlinkages, researchers find that resulting impacts from systemic risks drivers and compound vulnerabilities disrupt the formerly effective adaptive strategy of seasonal migration to maintain food security.