Enhancing Tea Agrifood System Resilience Amid Geopolitical Tensions: A Resource Nexus-Based System Dynamics Analysis

Geopolitical conflicts are increasingly threatening global food security, economic stability, and peace, impacting Tanzania's tea agrifood system. This study develops a quantitative Resource Nexus-based system dynamics simulation model assessing the feedbacks and interdependencies among key environmental and socioeconomic resources shaping system vulnerability and resilience in the context of geopolitical tensions. Over a 10-year horizon (2024–2034), the model simulates interactions among land use, agricultural inputs, capital productivity, and export performance, as the main variables driving the tea agrifood system in the context of geopolitical tensions, and generates vulnerability and resilience indices. Results indicate that rising geopolitical tensions increase vulnerabilities in land use, inputs, and capital, reducing agricultural productivity and export potential that negatively impact income generation and decent livelihoods. The study recommends adaptive strategies (i.e., intensive agricultural mechanization, capacity building, and modern tea markets) and transformative change policies (i.e., conflict resolution, sustainable agriculture, and agrifood systems governance and policy reforms) can stabilize resource performance, lowering vulnerability and strengthening the sector's resilience, which is essentially shaped by multiple archetypes, such as limits to growth and shifting the burden archetypes. This study contributes to the growing knowledge on the consideration of Resource Nexus on achieving agrifood resilience and finally recommends policy renovations that facilitate sustainable livelihoods and conflict prevention.