Getting into the doughnut: a framework for assessing systemic resilience in the global food system

The global food system’s recent disruptions reveal its vulnerability to cascading failures, highlighting the urgent need to strengthen its systemic resilience, a vital precondition for global food security. Though modeling is key to comprehending its complex behavior and informing policy and decisions, the conceptualization, assessment, and modeling of systemic resilience are still in their infancy, raising questions about the suitability of existing models for evaluating resilience-building solutions. Utilizing insights from complexity theory and systems thinking, this paper proposes a holistic framework of seven criteria to evaluate modeling approaches and policies for systemic resilience. An assessment of five existing modeling approaches and associated examples of existing models reveals important gaps in current methodologies, especially regarding the transmission and amplification of impacts on the macro scale. Hence, we call for enhancing the analytical preparedness capability through the development of new models and clear communication of current shortfalls to stakeholders for improved governance.