Food, Climate, and Possibility

By Dr. Maryam Mariya, Ishigami Rumiko and Adnan Cheema

The world is arriving at COP30 with its stomach already empty. Nearly 300 million people — almost the population of an entire continent — went to bed last year, not knowing if there would be food the next day. That number has tripled in less than a decade. It is not so much a production failure, as a failure of systems: fragile supply chains, climate-fueled disasters, conflicts that never quite end, and an economic order that treats food as a commodity before it treats it as a covenant.

Here in the Maldives - a scatter of islands in the vast Indian Ocean, vulnerable and beautiful in equal measure - the fragility of food is lived daily. Every grain of rice and every onion, like every fish, passes through the sieve of distance, freight, and rising seas. Saltwater creeps into the soil. Imports, once dependable, buckle under distant crises. For a nation that floats on water, food is heavy - in cost, in effort, in uncertainty.

History reminds us that food has always been more than nourishment. It has been territory and resistance, memory and power. The story of our ala olhu, kandoo from the mangroves, the dying art of tapping toddy - food has shaped identity, but it has also been the site of undoing.

And yet, history never moves in only one direction. We have been shown again and again, that even in vulnerability, there have always been seeds of hope. In Shaviyani Goidhoo, an island in the northern seas of Maldives, ten farmers have just been certified under the Maldives Good Agricultural Practices scheme, under the Japan-supported ‘Project for Developing Sustainable Agricultural Economy (PDSAE)’ - the first in the country to meet this rigorous standard of safety and sustainability.

This is proof that safe, climate-smart, sustainable agriculture can exist even in the remotest places on the planet. With the support of the Government of Japan, UNDP, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Welfare, new tools are aligning to drive a systemic shift - solar-powered agri-boats that carry produce across waves, cold storage that keeps food from spoiling in the heat, vertical farms that make the most of limited land, and women- and youth-led agri-lots that seed new models of agripreneurship—quiet bulwarks against the storms ahead, and that reimagine how food is produced, transported, and consumed in the Maldives.

For Maldivian families, it means healthier food on the table; for farmers, it opens new markets and better livelihoods; and for the country, it signals a step towards greater self-reliance and resilience, with the backbone of climate-resilient technologies, technical expertise, and trusted standards.

From these fragments, rise truths we cannot ignore. Resilience is not built in the aftermath of disaster but in the long, ordinary days before it. Collaboration is not charity, it is survival - farmers, governments, local and global partners bound in the same net. In a country where tourism feeds a third of the economy, food systems cannot stand apart. The resorts and the wider hospitality industry carry untapped potential - tables that could serve local harvests, choices that could sustain farmers, and demand that could ease the nation’s dependence on imports. Coherence matters: fragmented efforts scatter like seeds on saltwater but aligned systems grow the roots of resilience.

Food is not peripheral to climate discussions; it is at the center. Agri-food systems determine not only what we eat, but how land is used, how water is managed, how carbon is sequestered, how societies hold together in the face of disruption. Food is about dignity, about futures, about the invisible threads that bind economies, ecosystems, and human lives.

At COP30, as the world convenes on the Amazon - another crucible of food, climate, and history - we must place food systems squarely within the climate agenda. Adaptation finance, technological innovation, and inclusive policies must converge to ensure the farmers certification in Goidhoo does not remain an exception but becomes the rule.

World Food Day is a reminder that history is unfinished. The choices we make today - about land, about food, about solidarity - will ripple outward, long after us.

Dr. Maryam Mariya is the Minister of Agriculture and Animal Welfare of the Maldives, H.E. Ishigami Rumiko is the Ambassador of Japan to the Maldives, and Adnan Cheema is the UNDP Resident Representative in the Maldives.