Asia and the Pacific Food Systems Forum 2026

Feeding the Future, Sustaining the Planet

March 16-19, ADB Headquarters, Metro Manila, Philippines

Overview

Agriculture remains a strong driver of livelihoods and economic growth in Asia and the Pacific. However, the region’s food systems are increasingly vulnerable to floods, droughts, heat stress, glacier melt, land degradation, and biodiversity loss. The Asia and the Pacific face a converging crisis of climate change, eroding natural capital, and rising food & water insecurity.

Responding to these challenges, and to advance its food systems transformation commitment, The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is bringing together government leaders, global experts, scientists, private sector innovators, development partners and civil society to shape a resilient and sustainable future for the region. Under the theme – ‘Feeding the Future, Sustaining the Planet’, the Asia and the Pacific Food Systems Forum 2026 will aim to:

Identify priority issues, policies, and actions toward food systems transformation in the Asia and Pacific region.
Describe key challenges and solutions / innovations aligned with each operational approach pillar, including country initiatives.
Highlight natural capital approaches linked to food systems transformation.
Find out emerging areas in support of nutrition security for potential ADB investments.
Discuss measures to supplement and complement actions of key partners aligned with ADB’s flagship initiatives in support of food systems transformation.

GAIN Priority Themes:

Investing in Nutrition
Building Resilient Food Systems
Accelerating Agrifood Systems Transformation in Asia & the Pacific – Policy to
Investment
Tools that help Accelerate Food Systems Transformation

GAIN at the Asia and the Pacific Food Systems Forum 2026

Tentative Agenda

Date	Time	Session Title	GAIN Speaker
March 16 – 19	9:00 – 17:00	GAIN booth at ‘Innovation Market Place’ – “From Data to Action: Tools to Accelerate Food Systems Transformation”	Garima Singh Mohammad Monirul
March 17	11:00 – 12:30	Forum Leaders Session 2	Lawrence Haddad
March 17	14:00 – 15:30	e-Marketplace: Exploring Innovations for Food Systems Transformation	Mohammad Monirul Garima Singh
March 17	16:00 – 17:30	Indonesia: Food Systems Transformation Deep Dive	Agnes Mallipu Widya Sutiyo
March 18	8:30 – 9:50	Accelerating Agrifood Systems Transformation in Asia and the Pacific: From Policy to Investment (Deep Dive)	Lawrence Haddad
March 18	11:00 – 12:00	Meeting with SAARC	Lawrence Haddad Jamie Morrison Bhuvaneswari Balasubramanian Farrah Naz Mohammad Monirul
March 18	14:00 – 15:30	Nature, Climate & Nutrition: Building Resilient Food Systems	Oliver Camp (Remote) Lawrence Haddad
March 19	11:20 – 12:30	Investing in the Private Sector for Nutrition – Nutrition Finance Facility	Roberta Bove Lawrence Haddad
March 19	16:00 – 17:30	Strengthening Food Systems Decision Making: Digital tools and data for Investing in Healthy Diets	Stella Nordhagen

Data to Action: Tools to Accelerate Food Systems Transformation

The Food Systems Dashboard gives a complete view of food systems by consolidating data from multiple sources, identify food systems opportunities and vulnerabilities. This tool can help government, policymakers and others target scarce resources for maximum impact.

The Policy Coherence Tool shows whether policies in different sectors align behind shared food system goals. Policy incoherence often leads to inefficient and lower likelihood of achieving policy goals, as well as missed opportunities for leveraging synergies across policy areas where they exist. This tool helps avoid fragmented policymaking and improve intersectoral coordination.

Political economy dynamics – that is, conflicts and trade-offs across different interest groups play an important role in food systems. The Political Economy Assessment Tool helps identify potential political economy bottlenecks and offers practical ways to understand and grapple with these dynamics to enable progress in food systems reform.

The 3FS Tool offers a harmonized methodology to measure financial flows to food systems, enabling advocates to push for smarter financial alignment.

Diet Quality Questionnaire is a simple five-minute survey that rapidly assesses the nutritional quality of diets.

I-CAN: Climate Action & Nutrition can serve as a tool that catalyses climate action for nutrition benefits, and nutrition action for climate benefits.

Food Systems Countdown Initiative supports food systems transformation by bringing together indicators that span food systems and provide annual analysis to inform policy, business, and NGO priorities and actions.

NutrInvest Tool enables you to assess the nutrition impact of any investment: whether you are a development finance institution, impact investor, or fund manager, this tool helps you screen investments through a simple nutrition-lens framework — making it easier to identify opportunities that deliver better nutrition outcomes.

Foresight for FST (FoSTr) is a tool that utilises participatory, evidence-based methods for scenario analysis and future modelling. The tool supports national food systems change toward sustainable, resilient, and healthy futures.