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Abstract

In a strongly interconnected world, extreme and compound events pose systemic risks to food security and populations already vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Pre-existing vulnerabilities can also compound, interfering with adaptation strategies and affecting human migration patterns. While some drivers of compound vulnerability are known on a normative level, there remains a critical gap on the relationship between drivers of vulnerability systemic risk, and food insecurity outcomes. We use a systemic risk impact pathway (SRIP) model to gain data-driven insights on the drivers of systemic risk and the impacts on food insecurity in Somalia. By applying data on extreme weather and food insecure internally displaced populations from 2011 to 2019 we isolate different components of vulnerability and show how they compound and relate to systemic risk drivers. Our findings contribute to the empirical evidence on limits to adaptation indicating that systemic risk impacts compound vulnerabilities and act as adaptation ‘roadblocks’ for food security. We argue that a systems design can provide guardrails to resilience opportunities where compound vulnerabilities overstretch fragile resilience levels.