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Extreme events, such as those caused by climate change, economic or geopolitical shocks, and pest or disease epidemics, threaten global food security. The complexity of causation, as well as the myriad ways that an event, or a sequence of events, creates cascading and systemic impacts, poses significant challenges to food systems research and policy alike. To identify priority food security risks and research opportunities, we asked experts from a range of fields and geographies to describe key threats to global food security over the next two decades and to suggest key research questions and gaps on this topic. Here, we present a prioritization of threats to global food security from extreme events, as well as emerging research questions that highlight the conceptual and practical challenges that exist in designing, adopting, and governing resilient food systems. We hope that these findings help in directing research funding and resources toward food system transformations needed to help society tackle major food system risks and food insecurity under extreme events.

The study of disaster risk is primarily aimed at identifying who may be at risk (vulnerable populations) from specific events (causes) so as to prevent and/or facilitate timely responses to them. These causes are predominantly defined by historical data rather than from forecasting potential risks. Many of the threats to health and security today are transnational, whether it is the spread of an infectious disease, migration of displaced people, or the widespread impact of a weather event. There is a paucity of discussion and literature that attempts to describe new and emerging causes of disasters, or the potential impact of these events. Reasons for this may include perceptions of these causes as being non-traditional threats and, therefore, not readily interpreted as causes of disasters and thus not as disasters at all. They may include climate change, social disruptions such as terrorism, economic crisis, drug trafficking or increased drug usage. The risks and impacts are changing because of societal and social change, economic changes and rapidly changing technology and interconnectedness. Traditional views of disaster are limiting, as they do not include high-impact events that are not associated with emergency service responses. The health consequences of these events are complex to understand. Nevertheless, careful analysis of these events reveals alignment of their human impact against established criteria that define disasters. The aim of this paper is to examine emerging causes of disasters and non-traditional health threats, consider their relationship to contemporary emergency management risk assessment, and consider what is required for emergency management to adapt and confront this emerging reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: To examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mortality, we estimated excess all-cause mortality in 24 countries for 2020 and 2021, overall and stratified by sex and age., Methods: Total, age-specific and sex-specific weekly all-cause mortality was collected for 2015-2021 and excess mortality for 2020 and 2021 was calculated by comparing weekly 2020 and 2021 age-standardised mortality rates against expected mortality, estimated based on historical data (2015-2019), accounting for seasonality, and long-term and short-term trends. Age-specific weekly excess mortality was similarly calculated using crude mortality rates. The association of country and pandemic-related variables with excess mortality was investigated using simple and multilevel regression models., Results: Excess cumulative mortality for both 2020 and 2021 was found in Austria, Brazil, Belgium, Cyprus, England and Wales, Estonia, France, Georgia, Greece, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Mauritius, Northern Ireland, Norway, Peru, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, and the USA. Australia and Denmark experienced excess mortality only in 2021. Mauritius demonstrated a statistically significant decrease in all-cause mortality during both years. Weekly incidence of COVID-19 was significantly positively associated with excess mortality for both years, but the positive association was attenuated in 2021 as percentage of the population fully vaccinated increased. Stringency index of control measures was positively and negatively associated with excess mortality in 2020 and 2021, respectively., Conclusion: This study provides evidence of substantial excess mortality in most countries investigated during the first 2 years of the pandemic and suggests that COVID-19 incidence, stringency of control measures and vaccination rates interacted in determining the magnitude of excess mortality., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2024. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.)