Country: World Source: ASRA Network Debuts with Food Systems Focus Through McKnight Foundation PartnershipPARIS, FRANCE – Sunday, 8 June 2025: At its flagship symposium, "Currents of Change: New Horizons in Systemic Risk," ASRA (the Accelerator for Systemic Risk Assessment) today announced a demonstration version of STEER: Systemic Tool for Exploring and Evaluating Risks, a proof-of-concept designed to help individuals and organizations understand and respond to today's compounding and cascading risks.This demonstration version of STEER represents a significant step toward a new paradigm in risk assessment and response—addressing not just isolated risks, but the interconnected, compounding and cascading threats that span ecological, economic, social, and political systems. The demo also marks the beginning of STEER's first real-world application. A new partnership with McKnight Foundation, a leading climate, equity, and food systems funder, also announced today, will see ASRA’s approaches applied to help users generate preliminary assessments of agroecological food systems across multiple regions, helping them design interventions that address root causes of risk, rather than symptoms. Food systems—deeply entangled with climate change, poverty, biodiversity loss, political instability, and financial insecurity—provide an ideal first testbed for STEER's capabilities.Unlike traditional risk analysis that focuses on likelihood and impact of isolated events, STEER enables users to:Build capacity to understand systems, map how risks emerge and interact across sectors and scalesConsider concepts such as causal links, feedback loops, and systemic drivers of vulnerability, and how they can be appliedAssess potential responses for risk mitigation, preparedness, adaptation, and transformation away form the harms of systemic riskIdentify steps to build strategies based on a more holistic, comprehensive understanding of systemic risk.STEER operationalizes ASRA's core principles for addressing systemic risk including: justice, universal responsibility, complexity, non-human sanctity, and multiple ways of knowing, amongst others. The framework has been co-developed and shaped with input from ASRA's transdisciplinary and global network of over +90 members spanning academia, policy, and practice.“STEER is a practical, innovative, and necessary tool for systemic risk assessment and response that fills a growing and urgent need given the current polycrisis,” said Ruth Richardson, Executive Director of ASRA. “While we're still in the early stages, we're excited to invite organizations to join us as early adopters—helping to build not only the tools, but also the capacities and capabilities needed to understand and respond to systemic risks.”The $150,000 grant, provided by McKnight's Global Collaboration for Resilient Food Systems (CRFS) program, will be used to fund initial pilots in Africa and Latin America, with a focus on applying ASRA’s innovative methods to reinforce local risk analysis, guiding transformative responses and uncovering resilience enablers. Food systems—at the heart of ecological, social, and economic dynamics—are a nexus issue that can help illuminate systemic risk and serve as a connective tissue across agendas, from climate and culture to human rights, health, and economic justice."We’re excited to be working with ASRA to grow the important field and practice of systemic risk, and to apply this lens to the challenges of making food systems more sustainable and equitable. We anticipate that the approach will help our partners—most often smallholder farmers on the frontlines of climate and biodiversity impacts—to visualize connections that are typically invisible in traditional risk assessment, bringing to light potential new leverage points for meaningful systems change,” said Jane Maland Cady, Program Director for McKnight Foundation’s Global Collaboration for Resilient Food Systems.ASRA plans to work with “early adopters” from across sectors and industries to trial the demo version of STEER and the formal launch will take place in the fall 2025. Organizations interested in testing this innovative, new approach can indicate their interest at steer.asranetwork.orgThe STEER preview launch takes place today at ASRA's "Currents of Change" symposium, a transdisciplinary gathering of over 250 world-leading experts exploring interconnections driving our polycrisis and unlocking pathways toward more just, resilient futures where all people, societies, species, and ecosystems thrive.EndsMedia contact details: Kasia Murphy, kmurphy@asranetwork.org +34 676 607 605About ASRA: ASRA (the Accelerator for Systemic Risk Assessment) aims to mainstream systemic risk assessment in policy and decision-making in response to current and future challenges. Hosted by the United Nations Foundation, this independent initiative advances the field and practice of systemic risk, and advocates for transformative action for the prosperity of all people, societies, species, and ecosystems. Learn more at: www.asranetwork.orgAbout McKnight Foundation: The Global Collaborative for Resilient Food Systems (CRFS) works directly with farmers to advance equity and further agricultural research and practice across Africa, South America, and the Midwestern United States. CRFS is a program of the McKnight Foundation, a family foundation based in Minnesota, USA, whose mission is to advance a more just, creative, and abundant future where people and planet thrive. Learn more at https://www.mcknight.org/programs/global-foods/.