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

英国从COVID-19中复苏需要平衡经济、社会凝聚力和健康需求。目前，在国家复苏的一些框架中，环境并没有明确规定，但涉及环境的一些重大风险可能在相对较短的时间内（例如<24个月）影响经济、社会凝聚力和健康。我们的团队结合了政府内部的学者（Defra）和领先的复杂性评估研究中心（CECAN），将开发系统分析来评估这些风险。我们将提供知识，为缓解这些风险的紧急政策提供信息，并建议监控流程，根据关键“观察点”跟踪系统动态，以触发缓解行动。此外，我们将确定目标研究的不确定性水平和关键证据差距。为实现这一目标，我们将利用与国际学术专家和英国政府官员的数字研讨会，制定因果循环图，绘制环境风险在短时间内影响英国COVID-19恢复关键要素的系统关系。我们将重点关注三个重要案例：i)生物安全——提高对COVID-19和第二次人畜共患病暴发的抵御能力；㈡改善联合王国人口的呼吸系统健康；（三）粮食安全——确保国内和国际供应链的复原力。我们将把产出整合到目前德国环境与发展事务部与内阁办公室的互动中，以确保英国的复苏战略充分应对系统性风险，更广泛地说，提高明确评估和减轻英国治理中复杂风险的必要性，特别是在2019冠状病毒病期间重建国家的背景下。

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 economy, societal cohesion and health over a relatively short timeframe (e.g. <24 months). Our team, combining academics embedded in government (Defra) and a leading research centre for evaluating complexity (CECAN), will develop systems analyses to appraise these risks. We will provide knowledge to inform urgent policy to mitigate these risks and recommend monitoring processes that track system dynamics based on key 'watchpoints' to trigger mitigation actions. Furthermore, we will identify uncertainty levels and critical evidence gaps for targeting research. To achieve this, we will use digital workshops with international academic experts and UK government officials to develop causal loop diagrams that map system relationships where environmental risks affect key elements of UK COVID-19 recovery over a short time horizon. We 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.