Identifying key priorities for researchers and funders can be greatly aided through crowdsourcing approaches, which collect the knowledge and wisdom of many, and reduce bias associated with any particular researcher or group.67
While similar exercises have been undertaken across a range of fields and topics, this work presents, as far as we know, the first attempt to compile and build consensus on the major threats and priorities for research on food security in the face of extreme events from experts working with diverse backgrounds and expertise and geographic foci. New panel compositions and teams may provide different perspectives, particularly with higher representation of fisheries, livestock, hunting, and foraging expertise. At the same time we recognize that many of the issues we identified are important across these diverse domains. With these points in mind, our results provide some clear insights into some of the major issues threatening global food security from extreme events over the next two decades, as well as examples of some of the top research questions on this topic.

Our analysis found that experts perceived threats on correlated risks across geographies and sequential years to be high. While this topic has previously received attention from a climate perspective, our analysis extends this further to a broader range of hazards. There was significant concern that compound events will continue to lead to reductions in redundancy, and degrade communities’, regions’, and nations’ abilities to respond to events when they occur. Furthermore, major socio-political, geophysical, and climatological changes in Africa and Asia present key connected and compounding threats to many of the world’s most food insecure.

Our prioritization also indicated that both scientists and practitioners have a need for more granular data and better maps, and improved predictive capacity. New methods of analysis and technologies have allowed for improved advisories, surveillance, monitoring, and humanitarian response, but at the same time a scarcity of ground data and lack of systems for grassroots data governance, as well as the underutilized role of forecasting in decision-making (such as timely disbursement of resources that limit the scale of disasters), limits the potential of these technologies. There is a need to ensure that the design of new tools, data, and information products is inclusive and coupled with capacity building, improved access and utilization, respect for data sovereignty, and evaluation in terms of ultimate on the ground impact.

Our findings support the notion that the pathway to peace globally remains essential for ensuring global food security in the face of extreme events. Conflict and lack of cooperation—in a variety of manifestations, and at different political scales—continues to present a major impediment to global food security and is a key factor that predisposes communities and nations to disasters following shocks.

Since the inception of this project, civil wars in Syria and Yemen have continued to protract, while several new conflicts have arisen, such as the Ethiopian civil war and the Ukraine-Russia war, all of which threaten regional and global food security.