The Experience of Food Shortage from Climate Shocks: A Long-Term View

As disaster managers are aware, vulnerabilities to human securities condition the impacts of climate shocks.  But current practices of disaster relief focus on provisioning and returning conditions to pre-shock form, a practice that does not reduce the probability of future disasters.  Using prehistoric and historic cases from the vastly different settings of icy, cold Iceland, Greenland, and Faroe Islands along with the drought-prone US Southwest the relationship between vulnerabilities to food shortage and the impacts of climate shocks is explored.  The outcome of this work supports the plea from disaster managers to address vulnerabilities to food shortage as a strategy for ameliorating the impacts of future climate shocks.