Assessing cascading effects of climate change on the UK food system and food security

This paper presents a holistic assessment of cascading climate risks on the security and resilience of food systems (FSs) in the United Kingdom (UK). It adopts a scoping review approach to assess vulnerabilities in the UK FS and to discuss methods used to develop cascading climate effect narratives. Results were synthesised to provide recommendations for building resilience and to guide future work. Import reliance and power imbalances are main sources of UK FS vulnerabilities. Climate change risks cascade through FSs and socio-economic systems, increase vulnerabilities and inequality and pose significant threat for food security. The findings highlight the need for greater standardisation in assessment approaches to produce a coherent body of research that can inform researchers, the general population and policy makers alike. The latter are particularly important due to their power to instigate the system level transformations required to safeguard food security in light of climate change.