Scoping Potential Routes to UK Civil Unrest via the Food System: Results of a Structured Expert Elicitation
Jones, A., Bridle, S., Denby, K. (2023). Scoping Potential Routes to UK Civil Unrest via the Food System: Results of a Structured Expert Elicitation. Sustainability, 15(20), article number 14783. doi: 10.3390/su152014783
Abstract
We report the results of a structured expert elicitation to identify the most likely types of potential food system disruption scenarios for the UK, focusing on routes to civil unrest. We take a backcasting approach by defining as an end-point a societal event in which 1 in 2000 people have been injured in the UK, which 40% of experts rated as “Possible (20–50%)”, “More likely than not (50–80%)” or “Very likely (>80%)” over the coming decade. Over a timeframe of 50 years, this increased to 80% of experts. The experts considered two food system scenarios and ranked their plausibility of contributing to the given societal scenario. For a timescale of 10 years, the majority identified a food distribution problem as the most likely. Over a timescale of 50 years, the experts were more evenly split between the two scenarios, but over half thought the most likely route to civil unrest would be a lack of total food in the UK. However, the experts stressed that the various causes of food system disruption are interconnected and can create cascading risks, highlighting the importance of a systems approach. We encourage food system stakeholders to use these results in their risk planning and recommend future work to support prevention, preparedness, response and recovery planning.
Publication Type: | Article |
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Additional Information: | © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Publisher Keywords: | food systems; global catastrophic risk; climate change; extreme weather; ecological collapse; scenarios; cascading risks |
Subjects: | G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor H Social Sciences > HM Sociology H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform |
Departments: | School of Health & Medical Sciences > Healthcare Services Research & Management > Food Policy |
SWORD Depositor: |
Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution International Public License 4.0.
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