Scoping Potential Routes to UK Civil Unrest via the Food System: Results of a Structured Expert Elicitation

 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.