8.18.2015

The Final Project Report from the UK-US Taskforce on Extreme Weather and Global Food System Resilience outlines "urgent" challenges that arise both from shifting weather patterns and from structural characteristics of the global supply chain for food. According to the authors:

We present evidence that the global food system is vulnerable to production shocks caused by extreme weather, and that this risk is growing. Although much more work needs to be done to reduce uncertainty, preliminary analysis of limited existing data suggests that the risk of a 1-in-100 year production shock is likely to increase to 1-in-30 or more by 2040. Additionally, recent studies suggest that our reliance on increasing volumes of global trade, whilst having many benefits, also creates structural vulnerability via a liability to amplify production shocks in some circumstances. Action is therefore needed to improve the resilience of the global food system to weather-related shocks, to mitigate their impact on people. 

 The report is also a helpful example of the struggle to resolve two contentious intellectual angles on the problem. Is greater resilience more likely to emerge from greater redundancy and centralization or greater diversity and decentralization? I would argue for the latter over the former. But certainly these two binaries do not reflect the full range of choice.

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