Systemic environmental risk analysis for threats to UK recovery from COVID-19

UK Recovery from COVID-19 needs to balance the needs of the economy, societal cohesion and health. The environment is not currently explicit in some framings of national recovery, yet there are a number of major risks involving it that can impact these areas over a relatively short timeframe (e.g. <24 months).

Our team will focus on three important cases:

i) Biosecurity- improving resilience to COVID-19 and a second zoonotic emergence;

ii) Improving respiratory health of the UK population;

iii) Food security- ensuring resilience of home and international supply chains.

We will integrate outputs into current Defra-Cabinet Office interactions to ensure that UK strategies for recovery adequately address systemic risks and, more generally, raise the profile of the need to explicitly appraise and mitigate for complex risk in UK governance, especially in the context of rebuilding the nation during COVID-19.