Market systems resilience: impact of COVID-19 and hurricanes Eta & Iota on Honduran market systems

This learning brief, drawn from a recorded presentation and a series of enterprise surveys conducted with COHEP and UNAH, applies a market systems resilience framework to the overlapping crises of COVID-19 and Hurricanes Eta and Iota in Honduras.

It distinguishes system-level resilience - concerned with the sustained functionality of the system as a whole - from household or enterprise-level coping, and organises its analysis around four resilience strategies: preparation, absorption, adaptation and transformation.

Survey evidence shows that Honduran enterprises faced three or more concurrent shocks in 2020, with 37 per cent describing it as the worst year on record and only 30 per cent achieving full recovery. The brief examines enterprise coping behaviours, the limited reach and effectiveness of public and private safety nets, and the uneven uptake of innovation. It then analyses four structural resilience capacities - diversity, connectivity, governance and power/inclusion - identifying specific weaknesses in each and proposing corresponding strategies.

The brief closes with examples of how the TMS activity adapted its portfolio in response to these findings.