Islandness and resilience: a study of food systems in the Maldives

• Food systems in Small Island Developing States are considered vulnerable to shocks. • In the Maldives, islanders employ multiple strategies to increase food system resilience. • They anticipate and adapt to shocks and disruptions to food systems. • Challenging the vulnerability paradigm, this paper highlights Islander’s resilience. Islands have long been depicted as vulnerable, lacking in resources, and constrained in their ability to adapt and recover from socio-economic and environmental challenges. Specifically, food systems in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are widely viewed as vulnerable to disruptions and shocks including the impacts of climate change, trade volatility and geopolitics. This paper assesses the opportunities and challenges to achieving a resilient food system in the Maldives, illustrating the ways in which islanders respond to disruptions and shocks to their food system. Drawing on research on two islands, this paper highlights three factors that support food system resilience: social and cultural norms that enhance everyday agency; multi-scalar connectivity between people and places; and decentralised governance and collective action in response to risks and shocks. Building on literature that challenges colonial and homogenized discourses of islands as being predominantly vulnerable, the paper presents a place-based and multi-scalar analysis of food systems. While vulnerability discourses around SIDS have been critiqued, few studies have done so in relation to food systems. This paper contributes novel insights by situating these critiques within the lived experiences of food system actors during a major crisis and grounding them in the Maldivian context. While acknowledging constraints and threats to food system resilience in SIDS this paper argues the need to look beyond conventional vulnerability paradigms to understand the form and extent of their agency and capabilities.