Institutional network and their links with potentially vulnerable spaces in the agriculture sector of the Honduras’ dry corridor

Abstract

Abstract The Honduras’ dry corridor presents a high natural climate variability since its location in the Pacific region of Central America, where nearly half of the Honduran populations develop their socio-economic activities. To be able to face the challenges of climate change adaptation in the agriculture sector and food and nutritional security, a coordination of actions is a requirement. The multiplicity of actors and their interventions generates an institutional network. But the question is if this institutional network is coherent of targeting intervention in the most vulnerable areas. This research aims to analyze the structural institutional network through a Social-Network Analysis approach to investigate the coherence, consistency, and relevance of public and private interventions related to agriculture, climate change and food security in 153 municipalities of the Honduras’ dry corridor. The bipartite analysis between institutions and municipalities, evidenced a dynamic core within two types of ego networks. An ego network in favor of one municipality, in which case only one was observed related to the Central District where the capital is located. While the second type is related to an ego network in favor to only one institution, that was observed in four cases. The latter is more evident for the municipalities near the frontiers with El Salvador and Guatemala. Regarding the spatial coherence between the institutional’ interventions and the climate change vulnerability of the municipalities, our results reveal spatial misfit, as only 9% of the actions directly linked to cope climate change adaptation are undertaken in highly potentially vulnerable municipalities. These results suggest that there is still improvement for collaborative actions in the institutional network as well as for spatial prioritization of interventions towards vulnerable municipalities.