James Robert Okoth, Acting Country Representative, Food and Agriculture Organization Pakistan

James Robert Okoth leads the FAO’s work in Pakistan at a moment when the gap between the country’s food production needs and its actual output has never been wider or more precarious. Pakistan feeds over 240 million people, relies on agriculture for nearly a quarter of its GDP and the livelihoods of the majority of its rural workforce, and yet the sector is being systematically weakened by the same climate shocks that hit hardest in the very communities that grow the food. The FAO’s Pakistan operation has been central to the flood response, to efforts to rebuild agriculture in the aftermath of 2022, and to longer-term work on climate-smart farming, soil health, and water efficiency. Okoth represents an organisation that sees hunger and climate as inseparable problems, and that has been working in Pakistan’s most vulnerable provinces long enough to know the difference between a short-term intervention and the kind of systemic change that actually builds resilience.