Coco Ushiyama, Country Representative, World Food Programme Pakistan

Coco Ushiyama runs the WFP’s operations in a country that consistently ranks among the world’s most food-insecure and most climate-exposed at the same time. Those two facts are not coincidental they are directly linked, and she has made that connection central to how WFP works in Pakistan. Under her leadership, the organisation secured a $9.8 million Green Climate Fund grant to build early warning systems and anticipatory action frameworks in flood-prone communities, putting climate resilience at the core of what has historically been understood as a humanitarian programme. She has pushed for a government cooperation framework that treats climate change as one of the four structural drivers of malnutrition in Pakistan, alongside conflict, economic downturns, and governance failures. Her argument is a straightforward one: you cannot build food security in Pakistan without building climate resilience, and you cannot build climate resilience without treating food systems as a central concern.