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NORGLOBAL2-Norge - global partner

SEGURA - Food for Security: Evidence from Cauca, Colombia

Alternative title: SEGURA - Mat, sikkerhet og konflikt: Lærdommer fra Cauca i Colombia

Awarded: NOK 9.0 mill.

Project Number:

302288

Application Type:

Project Period:

2020 - 2024

Funding received from:

Partner countries:

There has been extensive activity in all work packages during 2021 and 2022. In June 2021, a large survey was conducted among 900 households in four different municipalities in Cauca, two urban municipalities and two rural ones related to meal patterns and conflict. The results are available in a preliminary work report which will later be published as a journal article: Cuales son los principales determinants de la inseguridad alimentaria en el Cauca? Evidencia de familias vulnerables en cuatro municipios. The article is a collaboration between Arne Dulsrud at OsloMet as well as Gilma Olaya Vega at Pontificia Universidad Javeriania and Maria Gloria Cano at Econometria. A main conclusion: Food insecurity is very widespread among households in both rural and urban areas in Cauca, Colombia, and is accompanied by limited access to food and poor variety in the diet, and the most vulnerable lived in urban areas without fixed sources of income and/or subsidies. Great emphasis was placed on reporting back the results from our findings in the municipalities that participated in the survey (Totoro, Sotara, Popayan and Guapi). In October 2021, four large meetings were held where we met those who took part in the survey as well as local leaders. In May 2022, a master's thesis was delivered at the Department of Social Nutrition at OsloMet based on the interview material under the title Food Insecurity in Vulnerable Areas of Cauca, Colombia: A cross-sectional study by Cecilie Mosfjeld & Maria Uldahl. The master's thesis - with Arne Dulsrud as main supervisor - was presented by the students at the conference in Bogota 6-8 November 2022. Our Colombian partners Gilma Olaya Vega at Pontificia Universidad Javeriania and Maria Gloria Cano at Econometria served as informal co-supervisors. In May 2022, SIFO/OsloMet in collaboration with Universidad del Cauca organized a large conference over three days under the name Memorias with over 100 participants where the aim was to present different experiences about food insecurity. Indigenous groups, government officials and master's students participated, workshops were held about food security with students and speakers from SEGURA and from academics at the Universidad del Cauca. All presentations were published in a separate publication – Memorias. 7-9 November 2022, the project held three conferences in Colombia where all participants in the project presented the main findings from their projects. The conference was organized by our partner Pontificia Universidad Javeriania. The first day addressed an academic audience, where main results were commented by selected academic expertise. Day two addressed stakeholders. The conference was opened by, among others, the deputy head of the Norwegian Embassy in Bogota and included presentations by the newly elected head of the poverty project in the Colombian government. The fieldwork for the PhD student was completed in May 2022. It was carried out in a municipality of Jambalo in consultation with our partner and co-supervisor Professor Alba Torres at the Universidad del Valle in Cali characterized by food insecurity as a result of the cultivation of illegal products, including marijuana. Even though the field work was carried out under partly challenging political and climatic conditions, a preliminary analysis was presented during the conference in November 2022; Tough Dilemmas: Exploring the Link Between Food Security and Marijuana Crops in Jambaló, Cauca by Guisela Camacho. SEGURA's partner at the Universidad del Valle used its funding to establish a field study in a municipality in Cauca characterized by food shortages and conflict, consisting of professor Alba Marina Torres as well as three master's students and a bachelor's student who will deliver their assignments within the SEGURA project. The main findings from data analysis based on national data were launched during the conference in Bogota 6-8 November under the leadership of Fenella Carpena at OsloMet in collaboration with researchers at Econometria. In 2014, the FARC declared a unilateral ceasefire that resulted in a sharp decline in violence. This paper examines the impact of this decline in conflict on household food security. To do so, a difference-in-difference design is used with household survey data from the Encuesta Nacional de Calidad de Vida and conflict event data from the Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica. The main findings from the data analysis are clear - after the ceasefire, households are less food insecure, measured by uncertainty and anxiety about food, diet quantity, diet quality and hunger. A separate website has been established which contains a coding of all articles in the largest newspapers in Colombia (El Universal and El Espectador) on the subject of food safety. This is a large and comprehensive material that will be of great use to master's students and others interested in the topic. https://uni.oslomet.no/segura/.

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With Colombia and the Cauca region as its study setting, the SEGURA proposal aims to improve our knowledge about the complexities of the food security-conflict nexus, clarify theoretical relationships, and test theoretical intuitions using comprehensive fieldwork and empirical data. The SEGURA project is an interdisciplinary study of how conflict shapes, and is shaped by, food security. Our project builds on a large, yet incomplete, literature at the intersection of food security and conflict. Although a long academic tradition linking conflict and food security exists , our project address three key gaps in the literature. 1) the significance of local and institutional perspectives 2) the lack of an integrated and mulitidimensional concept of food security 3) the absence of gender dimensions. Our study will zoom in on the region of Cauca, a well-suited case for studying the complex dynamics between food insecurity and conflict. Cauca exemplifies the intricate web of actors and levels of violence that marks Colombian violent conflicts, involving: drug cartels, paramilitary, military, and guerrilla groups; disputes over access to land and environmental assets; and internal displacement and migration. The dynamic in Cauca includes a wide range of society and local level factors that represent challenges to food security and peaceful development, including unequal access to resources, poor infrastructures and weak state institutions, socio-cultural conflicts, and environmental degradation. Empirically, we aspire to explore and expand the food-insecurity nexus by 1) addressing how everyday householdfood provision is shaped by conflict and security, 2) by localizing food access institutionally, socially and culturally. 3) by addressing the dynamic of formal entitlements to food and informal ties and networks.

Publications from Cristin

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Funding scheme:

NORGLOBAL2-Norge - global partner