A commentary on the United Kingdom's leading food retailers' resilience plans in the face of climate change

• Author: Peter Jones,Daphne Comfort
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2047
• Published date: 01 May 2020
• Date: 01 May 2020

COMMENTARY

A commentary on the United Kingdom's leading food retailers'

resilience plans in the face of climate change

Peter Jones | Daphne Comfort

School of Business and Technology, University

of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, England

Correspondence

Peter Jones, School of Business and

Technology, University of Gloucestershire,

Cheltenham GL50 2RH, England.

Email: pjones@glos.ac.uk

In September 2019, the U.K. House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee

warned that the United Kingdom's food supply was vulnerable to climate change.

Within the U.K. food retailing is highly concentrated with the four leading food

retailers accounting for almost 70% of all food sales. In the face of the threat of cli-

mate change to food supplies, a focus on resilience might be seen to have much to

offer retailers. However, little work has been published in the academic literature on

if, and how, retailers are employing the concept of resilience in their business plans.

With these thoughts in mind, this commentary paper provides an exploratory review

of how the United Kingdom's four leading food retailers, namely Tesco, Sainsbury's,

Asda, and Morrisons, have publicly acknowledged the importance of resilience in the

face of climate change. The paper outlines definitions of resilience and retail resil-

ience, draws out four general themes within the U.K. food retailers' resilience plans,

and offers some wider reflections on the retailers' resilience plans in the face of cli-

mate change.

1|INTRODUCTION

In September 2019, the U.K. House of Commons Environmental

Audit Committee warned that the United Kingdom's food supply

was vulnerable to climate change. This warning currently stands in

marked contrast to the government's “UK Climate Change Risk

Assessment”(HM Government, 2017). The government recognised

“climate change will present significant risks to the availability and

supply of food in the United Kingdom,”it argued that “the resil-

ience of food supply chains is regularly tested by severe weather

and other events and consistently performs well,”but it took an

“optimistic view of the levels of resilience that are achieved

through functioning markets and diverse sources of supply.”How-

ever, the House of Commons Environment Audit Committee

(2019) expressed concern “that the Government is complacent

about the risks to food security posed by climate breakdown.”

Rather, the Environmental Audit Committee (2019) reported “envi-

ronmental change is projected to have increasingly major impacts

on global food systems, which would affect the United Kingdom's

food security and ability to deliver healthy, sustainably produced

diets.”With these thoughts in mind, this commentary paper pro-

vides an exploratory review of how the United Kingdom's four

leading food retailers, namely Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, and

Morrisons, who collectively account for almost 70% of all food

sales in the United Kingdom, have publicly acknowledged the

importance of resilience in the face of climate change. The paper

outlines definitions of resilience and retail resilience, draws out

four general themes within the U.K. food retailers' resilience plans,

and concludes with some wider reflections on the food retailers’

pursuit of resilience plans in the face of climate change.

2|RETAIL RESILIENCE

The concept of resilience defined as the, “the capacity to cope with

change and uncertainty”(Weichselgartner & Kelman, 2015) is

attracting increasing attention from a wide range of companies and

organisations (Jones & Comfort, 2018). Within the corporate world,

there is certainly growing recognition of the importance of resilience

and PricewaterhouseCoopers (2017a), for example, emphasised their

belief that “enterprise resilience is the most important capability in

business today.”Here, enterprise resilience is defined as “an organisa-

tion's capacity to anticipate and react to change, not only to survive,

but also to evolve”(PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2017b).

Received: 14 October 2019 Accepted: 26 October 2019

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2047

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