Resilience to global food supply catastrophes Seth D. Baum, David C. Denkenberger, Joshua M. Pearce, Alan Robock & Richelle Winkler Environment Systems and Decisions Formerly The Environmentalist ISSN 2194-5403 Volume 35 Number 2 Environ Syst Decis (2015) 35:301-313 DOI 10.1007/s10669-015-9549-2 1 23 Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media New York. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be self- archived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com”. 1 23 Author's personal copy Environ Syst Decis (2015) 35:301–313 DOI 10.1007/s10669-015-9549-2 Resilience to global food supply catastrophes 1 2 3 4,5 Seth D. Baum • David C. Denkenberger • Joshua M. Pearce • Alan Robock • Richelle Winkler6 Published online: 9 May 2015 Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015 Abstract Many global catastrophic risks threaten major food. Food supply resilience requires not just the food it- disruption to global food supplies, including nuclear wars, self, but also the accompanying systems of food production volcanic eruptions, asteroid and comet impacts, and plant and distribution. Overall, increasing food supply resilience disease outbreaks. This paper discusses options for in- can play an important role in global catastrophic risk re- creasing the resilience of food supplies to these risks. In duction. However, it is unwise to attempt maximizing food contrast to local catastrophes, global food supply catas- supply resilience, because doing so comes at the expense of trophes cannot be addressed via food aid from external other important objectives, including catastrophe preven- locations. Three options for food supply resilience are tion. Taking all these issues into account, the paper pro- identified: food stockpiles, agriculture, and foods produced poses a research agenda for analysis of specific food supply from alternative (non-sunlight) energy sources including resilience decisions. biomass and fossil fuels. Each of these three options has certain advantages and disadvantages. Stockpiles are ver- Keywords Global catastrophic risk Á Food security Á satile but expensive. Agriculture is efficient but less viable Resilience Á Alternative foods Á Nuclear winter Á Volcanic in certain catastrophe scenarios. Alternative foods are in- winter expensive pre-catastrophe but need to be scaled up post- catastrophe and may face issues of social acceptability. The 1 Introduction optimal portfolio of food options will typically include some of each and will additionally vary by location as Human civilization is threatened by a range of global regions vary in population and access to food input re- catastrophic risks. The severity of such catastrophes is so sources. Furthermore, if the catastrophe shuts down trans- large (indeed, it may be infinite) that these risks are portation, then resilience requires local self-sufficiency in important even if their probability is low. And so, scholars & Seth D. Baum 2 Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, 2345 Forest Avenue, [email protected] Durango, CO 81301, USA David C. Denkenberger 3 Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Michigan [email protected] Technological University, 601 M&M Building, 1400 Townsend Drive, Houghton, MI 49931, USA Joshua M. Pearce [email protected] 4 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Michigan Technological University, 601 M&M Building, Alan Robock 1400 Townsend Drive, Houghton, MI 49931, USA [email protected] 5 Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, Richelle Winkler 14 College Farm Road, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA [email protected] 6 Department of Social Sciences, Michigan Technological 1 Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, University, Houghton, MI, USA PO Box 40364, Washington, DC 20016, USA 123 Author's personal copy 302 Environ Syst Decis (2015) 35:301–313 over several decades have argued that reducing these risks global food supply catastrophe will occur, despite efforts should be an important priority for society today (e.g., made to prevent it. Sagan 1983;Ng1991; Bostrom 2002; Beckstead 2013).1 The prospect of global food supply catastrophe suggests Several known global catastrophic risks cause harm to a role for increasing civilization’s resilience to such human civilization by disrupting global food supplies, catastrophes. Resilience can be defined as ‘‘the ability to threatening severe global food security crises. Volcanic prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, and more eruptions, asteroid and comet impacts, and nuclear wars all successfully adapt to adverse events’’ (NAS 2012:1). Risk send particulate matter into the stratosphere. The particles analysts have increasingly recognized the importance of spread globally, blocking incoming sunlight, rapidly low- resilience in managing a variety of risks (Haimes 2009; ering surface temperatures and reducing precipitation, and Aven 2011; Park et al. 2013; Linkov et al. 2014), including in turn lowering agricultural yields (Robock et al. 2009; global catastrophic risks (Maher and Baum 2013; Baum Xia et al. 2015). A rapid increase in surface temperatures and Handoh 2014). A resilient system is able to retain can follow from the abrupt cessation of stratospheric geo- critical functionality in the face of disruptions, even while engineering, a technology proposed in response to global it may make adaptations of noncritical attributes. In the warming (e.g., Matthews and Caldeira 2007);2 this rapid face of global food supply catastrophes, a resilient global warming could have similarly harmful agricultural effects. human system will adapt its food procurement practices to Even without geoengineering, natural climate change could keep people alive and keep civilization intact. also be abrupt (Lenton et al. 2008; Valdes 2011). Plant In this paper, we discuss prospects for increasing re- pathogens and invasive species, including novel organisms silience to global food supply catastrophes. The paper syn- produced through biotechnology, could destroy major thesizes prior literature to derive some general insights about classes of crops (Dudley and Woodford 2002; Mann 1999; how resilience to global food supply catastrophes could and Saigo 2000). There may be additional risks to global food should be achieved. The paper additionally proposes a re- supplies that have not yet been identified. These unknown search agenda for analyzing specific resilience decisions. risks could relate to environmental change, emerging For local food supply catastrophes, the loss of food in technologies, and/or some other force.3 Because so many one location can be addressed by importing food from known global catastrophic risks impair food supplies, it is other locations. Indeed, food aid is commonly donated likely that unknown global catastrophic risks would as from distant locations during times of local catastrophe or well. Collectively, these risks make risks to food supplies famine. However, when the catastrophe is global, all lo- one of the largest classes of global catastrophic risk. cations are affected, so there may be no location with Ideally, these catastrophes would be prevented, such that surplus food to donate. Furthermore, transportation systems there would be no major loss of food. To the extent that may be nonoperational, in which case any surplus foods these catastrophes can be prevented, efforts to prevent them could not be delivered. Therefore, resilience could require should be made. However, such efforts may not succeed. local self-sufficiency in food and potentially in other re- Furthermore, some of the risks, such as volcanic eruptions, sources as well. cannot readily be prevented. Finally, the unknown risks, if Traditionally, calls for increasing resilience to global food there are any, potentially could be prevented, but it is not supply catastrophes have focused on stockpiling food before known how to do so. For these reasons, it is possible that a the catastrophe so that it is available for consumption after (Schneider 1976; Maher and Baum 2013). This is indeed a viable option. However, it is also very expensive and wors- ens pre-catastrophe food security, which is currently a sub- 1 The literature on these risks sometimes uses other terminology stantial problem. Because of this, we also consider two other besides ‘‘global catastrophic risks,’’ such as existential risks, extinc- tion risks, or simply catastrophic risks. The distinction between these options. The second option is to continue agriculture post- terms is not crucial for this paper. What matters is that these are all catastrophe, albeit in diminished form. Depending on the major risks to the viability of human civilization. specifics of the catastrophe scenario, some agriculture may 2 Stratospheric geoengineering is a procedure in which aerosols, be possible. The third option is to produce food from alter- typically sulfates, are injected into the stratosphere in order to block native energy sources, in particular