How to Prevent and Cope with Coincidence of Risks to the Global Food System

Abstract

The global food system faces major risks and threats that can cause massive economic loss; dislocation of food supply chains; and welfare loss of producers, consumers, and other food system actors. The interrelated nature of the system has highlighted the complexity of risks. Climate change, extreme weather events, and degradation and depletion of natural resources, including water, arable, forestry, and pastural lands, loss of biodiversity, emerging diseases, trade chokepoints and disruptions, macroeconomic shocks, and conflicts, can each seriously disrupt the system. Coincidence of these risks can compound the effects on global food security and nutrition. Smallholder farmers, rural migrants, women, youth, children, low-income populations, and other disadvantaged groups are particularly vulnerable. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic exemplifies a perfect storm of coincidental risks. This article reviews major risks that most significantly impact food systems and highlights the importance of prospects for coincidence of risks. We present pathways to de-risk food systems and a way forward to ensure healthy, sustainable, inclusive, and resilient food systems. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Volume 46 is October 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Food System Resilience: Concepts, Issues, and Challenges

“…Food systems are vulnerable to a range of interacting shocks and stresses (6,30). Both can have a major impact on key food system outcomes such as providing adequate quantities of good quality food at affordable prices, meaningful livelihoods, and environmental sustainability (31).…”

“…Furthermore, one needs to understand the risk of a particular shock or stress, including (but not limited to) unknown events, and hence explore uncertainty (48). Fan et al (30) refer to risks as decision-making situations in which the likelihoods of potential outcomes are known to the decision-maker (whereas in uncertain situations, they are not). Risks can vary in detectability, the likelihood of an adverse current or future occurrence, and the severity of their impact (49).…”

“…A recent review of current risks to the food system highlights the climate crisis, natural resources depletion and degradation, biodiversity loss, emerging diseases and food safety scares, trade shocks and conflict, and political instability and also points to their various interactions that can results in cascading risks leading to perfect storms (30). For example, a sharp inflation in the price of staple food was among the contributory factors of the uprisings and social unrest that culminated in the Arab Spring (55); protests often led to domestic revolutions and had heavy socioeconomic repercussions for the majority of Middle East and North African countries (56).…”

Reshaping Food Policy and Governance to Incentivize and Empower Disadvantaged Groups for Improving Nutrition

“…The co-occurrence of multiple epidemics, including obesity, undernutrition, and climate change, constitutes the global syndemic and affects human and planetary health [9]. The recurrent natural disasters, natural resource degradation, and rapid increase in zoonic diseases Nutrients 2022, 14, 648 2 of 19 constitute a series of epidemics and exert significant pressure on food systems [9][10][11]. Environmental challenges, such as climate change, natural resource depletion, and biodiversity loss, have put future food security and nutrition at greater risk.…”

“…Food policy and governance are currently malfunctioning despite their recognized roles in improving food security and public nutrition in many local and national contexts. With malnutrition being a multi-sectoral, multi-stakeholder, and multi-level challenge, policymakers must face trade-offs between personal needs and collective goals, as well as government regulations and voluntary industry codes [ 10 , 19 ]. Many countries have realized that the failures of food policies could distort resource allocation, leading to the overuse of water and land, increased greenhouse gas emissions, and worsening public health [ 20 , 21 ].…”