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Socioeconomic Dimensions of Wild Food Plant Use During the Conflict in Syria

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Abstract

Wild plants have served as a food source for humans since ancient times. The use of such foods particularly increases when the availability or accessibility of conventional foods is limited due to emergency situations, such as conflicts. Eleven years of the war in Syria have caused substantial socioeconomic and cultural changes, and have led to widespread food insecurity across the country. Our study seeks to scrutinize the impact of socioeconomic factors (e.g., age, gender, education, household size, direct involvement in the conflict, and household income) on the use of wild food plants during the conflict. The study was conducted in the coastal region of Syria between March 2020 and March 2021. Fifty respondents (26 women and 24 men) were interviewed in-depth on their use of wild plants during the current economic conditions resulting from the conflict. Statistical analysis revealed that the number of used species increased with informant age, while it declined with the increase in annual household income. Informant gender was a predictor for both reliance on wild plants and frequency of use. These findings may be crucially important to understand the effect of socioeconomic conditions on human behavior towards natural resources in crisis conditions.

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Data Availability

The data presented in this study are available on a reasonable request from the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

We are thankful to the local people who shared with us their knowledge and time in such hard conditions. We thank very much Dr. Lukas Pawera from the World Vegetable Center and Ing. Kindah Ibrahim from the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague for the helpful consultation on the data analysis.

Funding

This work was supported by the Internal Grant Agency of the Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Czech Republic (IGA FTZ, Project No. 20233114).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Crop Sciences and Agroforestry, Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Kamýcká 129, Praha - Suchdol, 165 00, Czech Republic

    Naji Sulaiman & Zbynek Polesny

  2. Department of Economics and Development, Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Kamýcká 129, Praha - Suchdol, 165 00, Czech Republic

    Vladimir Verner

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  1. Naji Sulaiman
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  2. Vladimir Verner
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  3. Zbynek Polesny
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Contributions

Naji Sulaiman and Zbynek Polesny conceptualized the study idea; Naji Sulaiman conducted the fieldwork, analyzed the data, and drafted the manuscript; Zbynek Polesny, Vladimir Verner, and Naji Sulaiman reviewed and edited the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zbynek Polesny.

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Participants were fully informed about the objectives and purpose of the proposed research, and informed consent was obtained prior to the interviews. The Code of Ethics of the International Society of Ethnobiology was rigorously followed.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Sulaiman, N., Verner, V. & Polesny, Z. Socioeconomic Dimensions of Wild Food Plant Use During the Conflict in Syria. Econ Bot 77, 267–281 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12231-023-09579-6

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