Building sustainable food systems: Madagascar’s integrated vision
Presentation delivered during an official side-event during COP30 held on 15 November.
Madagascar is living with the daily realities of climate shocks, ecological fragility and persistent food insecurity. Yet we have made a clear choice: to respond with responsibility and ambition. In recent years, our country has endured the longest droughts in the South, destructive floods in the North, increasingly frequent cyclones, and an alarming erosion of biodiversity. These climate and environmental shocks are accompanied by persistent food insecurity: more than 9 million Malagasy are affected, including over one million in acute need, while 75% of the population does not have access to nutritious food.
In some regions, children suffer from malnutrition before they can even walk. These realities are the daily faces of rural families, women producers, discouraged youth, damaged infrastructure, and public policies under strain. But Madagascar refuses resignation. We refuse to accept food insecurity as fate.
This is why Madagascar does not treat climate, nutrition, agriculture, land and biodiversity as separate agendas.
From vulnerability to resilience: building convergence across food, climate, biodiversity and land
The crisis we are facing is not sectoral — it is systemic. And Madagascar is responding with a systemic approach. Our conviction is clear: transforming food systems also means acting on climate, preserving biodiversity, and combating desertification. This is why we have placed food systems transformation at the heart of three ongoing strategic processes:
Updating our Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), with strengthened commitments on agroecology, sustainable landscape management, and nutrition as levers for adaptation;
Revising our National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, which integrates sustainable agriculture as a driver of preserving our endemic ecosystems;
Finalizing our action plan to operationationalize the national food systems transformation roadmap, which converges our ambitions on food security, climate, nutrition, and land management.
This integrated approach is not a conceptual luxury. It is a practical necessity in territories where droughts affect harvests, where loss of vegetation exacerbates malnutrition, and where fragile ecosystems shape the country’s agricultural future.
Strengthened national coordination: a Task Force for multi-sectoral, locally-anchored transformation
No ambition for transformation can succeed without governance that rises to the challenge. This is why Madagascar has established a national Task Force for food systems transformation, coordinated by the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock. This platform brings together all national stakeholders: public institutions, researchers, the private sector, civil society, UN agencies, technical and financial partners, and NGOs. Together, we are building a multisectoral, participatory, and inclusive response aligned with global frameworks: the SDGs, the Paris Agreement, the Kampala Declaration, and commitments made at Nutrition for Growth.
But this governance must not remain confined to the national level. For this reason, we are actively working to deploy this coordination model across every region, commune, and community, so that transformation is not a top-down slogan but a locally-driven process, adapted to field realities and rooted in local actors’ engagement.
From vision to Action: an evidence-based plan with clear costs and shared priorities
We are now reaching a decisive milestone. Madagascar is in an advanced phase of finalizing a national action plan to operationalize its food systems transformation roadmap. This plan is built on three key pillars:
High-impact interventions, grounded in evidence and priorities defined by Malagasy stakeholders;
A clear costing, estimated at around USD 4.5 billion per year, reflecting the scale of investment needed for an ambitious and durable transformation;
Clear results indicators focused on improving nutrition, increasing sustainable productivity, raising small producers’ incomes, and strengthening resilience to shocks.
This plan reflects our determination to move beyond the fragmented approaches of the past. It embodies strong political will to adopt coherent programming capable of guiding public and private investments toward concrete results. We have already begun doing this. And we continue to mobilize our partners to accelerate the scaling-up of sustainable solutions that are locally-anchored, equitable, and capable of driving structural transformation.
Tracking progress and strengthening accountability: a digital monitoring system
Leading structural transformation requires solid monitoring and evaluation tools. This is why Madagascar is developing a national digital monitoring system dedicated to tracking the implementation of the food systems transformation roadmap. This system will:
Measure the performance of all actors involved: public sector, producers, NGOs, companies;
Enable alignment and mutual learning across regions, sectors, and technical and financial partners;
Strengthen transparency, coordination, and collective accountability.
This tool, accessible from national to community level, will anchor transformation in a logic of results, transparency, and continuous improvement.
Unlocking resources: innovative financing for a just and sustainable transformation
Madagascar is well aware that the transformation we seek cannot be financed through public resources alone. This is why we are actively exploring additional sources and mechanisms, including:
Accessing carbon markets to finance agroecology, land restoration, and food-producing reforestation;
Leveraging blended finance — public resources, private investment, and concessional financing — to amplify impact;
Developing responsible public-private partnerships centered on priority value chains.
Our ambition is to create a financial environment conducive to responsible investment, where small producers, agricultural SMEs, and local governments can fully participate in transformation.
Conclusion: Madagascar chooses the difficult, but equitable, path
We come with the strength that comes from acknowledged vulnerability, with the clarity of a shared vision, and with the determination of our communities. We know that this transformation will be neither quick nor easy. But we also know that inaction will cost far more — in human lives, in degraded land, in generations left behind.
What Madagascar carries today is not simply an action plan. It is a collective and sovereign commitment to dignity, food security, intergenerational justice, and peace with nature. We know the road ahead is long. But we also know that the future cannot be decreed alone: it is built through shared will and shared responsibility.
To those seeking answers in an uncertain world, we say: walk with us. From the red soils of the South to the vibrant markets of the Highlands, from the threatened forests of the East to the faces of the women who feed, heal, cultivate, and resist — that is where hope is born. We extend our hand to partners who believe that resilience is built through cooperation and not fragmentation. From this conviction, Madagascar reaches out, firmly with resolve and optimism build a future of transformation, justice, and resilience.
