A description of the work (Abstract): Since the beginning of the pandemic many flaws in the way cities around the world function were made visible and the FAO identified the urban food provisioning system as one of these (Khim, 2020). COVID-19 is far from being the first biological hazard but in current times it is the first that has gravely affected all stages of the food system including, production, processing, packaging, distribution, retail, and consumption. More frequent climatic hazards have been studied and addressed through disaster risk reduction usually at the level of agricultural production such as unpredictable and extreme weather leading to failed harvests. Therefore, this paper combines the fields of disaster risk reduction and food system planning to build back better after the COVID-19 biological hazard in developing cities such as Lima, Peru and more particularly in the middle-low to low-income district of Villa Maria del Triunfo. This combination is based on the idea that disasters can be defined as the impact of a hazard on a human system which can be a food system and that literature in both fields mention resilience as a key concept to build back better. Throughout the case study assessing pre-disposing disaster risk to COVID-19 in the food system shed light on the unequal exposure, vulnerability, and capacity to act to disaster risk in Lima. It also created space to look at international examples of post-disaster recovery strategies in food systems of other cities and the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s most recent resilience framework called the City-Region Food system. The strategies suggested for the case of Villa Maria del Triunfo are transferable to cities that have similar issues but on the other hand they are also largely dependent on the will of cities and their actors to act on these matters. Thus, this paper can be seen as advocating for the implementation of food systems planning in disaster risk reduction as an important step for urban development.
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