More things prone to surprise collapse warns nef

Finance isn’t the only system that can crash. Food, energy and climate support-systems are more vulnerable and more prone to sudden collapse than previously thought warns nef in a pamphlet released today.

Global conditions are conspiring with the unintended consequences of UK economic and business practices to exacerbate vulnerability to alarming levels says think tank nef (the new economics foundation) in Nine Meals from Anarchy, published on Wednesday, 26 November 2008.

“Nothing reveals the thin veneer of civilisation like a threat to its fuel or food supply, or the cracks in society like a major climate-related disaster,” says Andrew Simms, author of the pamphlet, nef policy director and head of its climate change programme, “Yet perversely we're making a breakdown of our life support systems more, not less likely. Our current direction seems designed to increase our economic vulnerability and undermine the resilience we urgently need to build.”

In 2003 nef published detailed warnings about the nature and scale of the current credit crisis. Now, it says, many of the things that we take for granted for our day-to-day lives are also under threat of sudden, unexpected collapse. And, our current economic trajectory has left us dangerously exposed if they do. We face, it says, ‘inevitable surprises.’

Key infrastructure and supply chains are under threat as never before from a cocktail of:

• climate change, especially given the latest science on the potential for abrupt warming
• growing international competition for resources
• the global peak and decline of oil production
• an international food chain facing multiple stresses, all of which are further complicated by the rich-world financial crisis.

In addition to these external shocks to the economy, the unintended consequence of the large-scale shift to very centralised so-called ‘just-in-time’ delivery logistics in the fuel and food systems, designed to increase efficiency by minimising the holding of reserves, actually leaves the nation highly vulnerable if supplies are interrupted.

Continued dependence on short-term, market-oriented decision-making heightens vulnerability to shocks and creates an obstacle to building the economy’s resilience, as short-term price considerations repeatedly trump long-term security. The think tank calls on the government to prioritise building Britain’s economic resilience by investing in, and enabling a massive environmental transformation programme. In particular it says we should:

• Identify what we can learn from the history of fuel and food shortages including in Britain during war time, to reduce our international dependence and increase our domestic resource security.
• Identify what we can learn from the experience of other countries who experienced sudden interruptions to their fuel supply, like Cuba in the 1990s, and from periods like the fuel crises of the 1970s
• Implement a ‘Green New Deal’ programme for Britain, including a rapid decarbonisation diet that also stimulates new jobs and new skills, emulating plans already published in the UK, and the lead already taken by President-Elect Barack Obama in the US.
• Support the Transition Town movement (emphasis mine, CM) in Britain. The number of communities around the UK who are preparing for future energy and climate uncertainty is growing by the day. Government should learn from and empower these communities
• Meet our obligations to the international community by pushing for a scientifically-credible global climate deal, and by paying our ecological debts by ensuring that developing countries have sufficient resources to adapt to warming.

To do otherwise, the think tank says, leaves the nation very vulnerable and increases the risk of global instability.