The Global Food Security (GFS) programme has published a new report providing evidence for the existence of environmental tipping points and exploring the potential consequences for global food security.
The report ‘Environmental tipping points and food system dynamics’ was unveiled at a Parliamentary event held Wednesday 11 January attended by MPs, policy-makers, leading industry figures, researchers and funding agencies.
Environmental tipping points occur when a biophysical system experiences a shift from one stable state to another, thereby altering its function. These ‘step-changes’ deviate from the linear way we might usually expect a system to behave, and pose a serious threat to global food security because they could bring about profound changes in the provision of environmental goods and services that are difficult to reverse, which in turn could have serious effects on global food production.