Strategic Flexibility Meets Political Reality: An Integrated Framework for Climate-Resilient Global Food Systems

Abstract

The global food system is enmeshed in a profound dual crisis: it is a leading driver of anthropogenic climate change and simultaneously among its most vulnerable victims. This complex, self-reinforcing cycle threatens all dimensions of food security—availability, access, utilization, and stability—while exposing deep-seated inequities between and within nations. Confronting this challenge demands a radical departure from conventional, siloed approaches. This article argues that building a resilient and sustainable food future requires an integrated analytical framework that explicitly marries economic strategy with political reality. We propose a novel conceptual model that synthesizes two critical lenses. First, Strategic Investment Analysis employs Real Options Valuation (ROV) to reframe long-term agricultural and infrastructural investments as flexible, staged decisions. This approach quantifies the economic value of delaying irreversible commitments under deep uncertainty, moving beyond the limitations of traditional net-present-value calculations. Second, Policy Enabling Environment Analysis adapts tools from political science to map the governance landscape—examining actor power, competing policy narratives, and institutional fragmentation—that ultimately determines what is implementable. The core contention is that an investment pathway can be financially optimal yet politically infeasible; true resilience, therefore, resides at the intersection of economic rationality and institutional capacity. Through this integrated framework, the article develops and operationalizes three testable hypotheses concerning the value of flexibility, the primacy of governance constraints, and the spatial heterogeneity of optimal adaptation timing. It employs a mixed-methods research blueprint, combining quantitative real options modeling with qualitative comparative case study analysis, to propose empirical validation. The discussion navigates the critical tensions between precaution and urgency, efficiency and resilience, and optimization and equity, offering a roadmap for transformative action. Ultimately, this analysis concludes that the transformation of the food system must be managed as a dynamic, strategic portfolio rather than a set of discrete projects. The imperative is to foster systemic agility—cultivating financial instruments that reward adaptive capacity, designing institutions capable of learning, and forging governance compacts that align diverse interests toward the long-term goal of a food system capable of enduring the climate challenges of this century.