Agroecological Resilience: Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane María

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Georges Félix is a French-Puerto Rican agronomist, specialized in agroecology and agroforestry. He recently completed his PhD thesis at Wageningen University on the use and management of native shrubs for soil restoration in semi-arid Burkina Faso. He now teaches within the Bachelor of Sustainable Agriculture at the University of Puerto Rico at Utuado. He will soon join the Stabilisation Agriculture team at CAWR, where he will focus on agroecological resilience to natural disasters of Caribbean and Latin American farming systems.

The Caribbean is vulnerable to climate changes, yet the social-ecological characteristics of the islands’ inhabitants have historically allowed folks to absorb, adjust, and adapt to new conditions, particularly in the food production sectors. In the aftermath of hurricanes Irma and María in 2017, Puerto Rico was devastated. Nevertheless, agroecological farming systems demonstrated higher resilience than their conventional peers within a post-disaster recovery process that is politically unique.

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