Food Security

№ 2026-43 · October 2026 · 19 min

Resource Scarcity, Environmental Stress, and the Escalation of Armed Conflict

Scarcity is an accelerant, not a detonator. Drought cuts cereal yields by about 6% and doubles the odds of a crop failure, but in the same country an ordinary dry year barely changes the risk of war. Severe droughts raise the chance a new conflict starts the next year by about 60%, and in fragile states local droughts shift fighting toward communal and militia violence. Violence concentrates where scarcity meets weak states: 24 such countries, 7% of humanity, suffered 37% of conflict deaths in 2016–24.

№ 2026-23 · October 2026 · 16 min

Resilience in an Age of Polycrisis

Exposure did not decide how hard the 2021–23 food-price cascade hit; falling currencies did. Tracing that shock month by month from gas to fertiliser, grains and household food inflation in 183 countries — and the 2026 Strait of Hormuz shock along the same chain — gives a framework for when to diversify, decouple, buffer and absorb.