How Specific Resilience Pillars Mitigate the Impact of Drought on Food Security: Evidence from Uganda

The study aims to investigate household resilience capacities and their role in mitigating the effects of drought on food security. The research follows the TANGO framework and employs a two-step factor analysis to construct resilience capacity indexes. It utilizes a panel data from the Uganda National Panel Surveys (UNPS) undertaken between 2010/11 and 2018/19, spanning five waves. To minimize bias arising from subjective self-reported drought shock, the study introduces an objective measure of drought from the global SPEI database into the UNPS data. Attrition bias is controlled for by estimating the attrition hazard from the attrition function. The analysis reveals that households in Uganda exhibit significantly low and nearly static resilience capacities, implying that the majority of households remain highly susceptible to food insecurity in the event of severe drought. The study shows that building resilience capacities is an effective way of protecting households from such devastating situations. Adaptive capacity is found to be the most effective in mitigating the effects of drought on food security, while transformative capacity and absorptive capacities possess limited mitigating power. The study recommends investing in early warning systems and wide dissemination of climate-related information to enhance preparedness and adaptation. It also suggests encouraging and supporting the formation and sustainability of informal institutions at local levels, enhancing access to communal resources, improved infrastructure, and agriculture extension services for the most vulnerable groups. The study's findings have significant implications for policymakers and development practitioners working to enhance food security in drought-prone areas. The results highlight the importance of building resilience capacities, particularly adaptive capacity, to mitigate the effects of drought on food security. The study's recommendations provide a framework for policymakers to develop targeted interventions that address the specific needs of households in Uganda and other drought-prone areas. The study's use of nationally representative household panel data and global SPEI data allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the temporal dynamics of resilience and the effectiveness of different resilience capacities in mitigating the impact of drought on food security. The findings of this study contribute to the growing body of literature on resilience and food security, filling a significant analytical gap in the existing research. The study's results suggest that households in Uganda are highly susceptible to food insecurity in the event of severe drought. However, the impact of drought on food security reduces with drought duration, implying that households and humanitarian agencies are reactionary in nature, triggering resilience mechanisms after the shock has happened, rather than building resilience. The study's findings also highlight the importance of increasing resilience capacity indexes, which enhances household food security through both per capita food consumption and the number of meals per day. Regression analysis based on the three resilience capacities reveals that absorptive capacity significantly enhances per capita food consumption and the number of times households eat. Adaptive and transformative capacities are only effective in enhancing per capita food consumption. Nonetheless, results suggest that increase in each of these capacities results in more than just a marginal improvement in food security outcomes.