As global momentum builds around climate action and food systems transformation, the gap between commitment and implementation remains wide. With COP30, the next UN Food Systems stocktake, and the Global Goal on Adaptation negotiations on the horizon – 2025 is a critical year for translating high-level climate policy into measurable local progress.
On June 3rd, 2025, GHV hosted a timely discussion on how to bridge this gap. The panel explored what it will take to turn global agreements into grounded action, and how we could apply lessons from past processes to strengthen implementation and accountability moving forward.
Dr. Cristina Rumbaitis del Rio has nearly twenty years of experience developing and implementing climate change adaptation and resilience programs. Immediately prior to joining the United Nations Foundation, she was a senior adaptation and resilience advisor with the World Resources Institute and an international engagement associate with the Food and Land Use Coalition. Prior to that, she was the Action Track co-manager for the Global Commission on Adaptation, where she led the development of impact initiatives on locally led adaptation, agriculture, and food security, among other issues.
She was also a regional programme manager for Action on Climate Today, a £23 million UK Agency for International Development-supported climate change program that mainstreamed resilience into planning and budgeting at the national and sub-national level in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. Based in New Delhi, she managed an implementation team of approximately 40 people across the program locations. Cristina also served as a senior associate director at the Rockefeller Foundation in New York from 2007-2015, where she developed and managed initiatives to build resilience to climate change in water management, small scale fisheries, and ecosystems and the services they provide to humankind. She managed a grant portfolio of over $100 Million.
Cristina was a post-doctoral fellow at Columbia University’s Earth Institute and has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University and a doctorate in Ecology from the University of Colorado. She is vice-chair of the Board of Trustees of the World Fish Centre (ICLARM) and also a trustee of the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership.
Dr. Maha Al-Zu'bi is a climate policy and water governance expert with over 20 years of experience leading development programs across MENA and Central Asia. She has worked with UNDP, GIZ, GGGI, and others, and held academic leadership roles at the University of Calgary’s Global Research Initiative. Her work focuses on integrated, locally driven solutions for water, food, energy, and environmental challenges. She currently serves as regional researcher – Sustainable and Resilient Water Systems at IWMI.
Lina Yassin is a researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), where she works within the Climate Diplomacy team. She supports the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Group at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), providing technical advice on adaptation negotiations, including the Global Goal on Adaptation and national adaptation plans. Lina works closely with negotiators and policymakers to ensure that LDC positions are evidence-based and reflect the priorities of the most climate-vulnerable countries.
Dan Gilligan is Director of the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). His research addresses the global challenges of poverty, food insecurity and malnutrition. Much of his research uses rigorous impact evaluations of large-scale and pilot programs in social protection, nutrition, and agriculture to test innovation delivery approaches and examine the economics and intra-household gender dynamics that shape their effectiveness. Some of this work involves testing strategies to strengthen resilience for women and their families to shocks due to climate change, health emergencies or conflict.
Dr. Iftikhar Mostafa works in the World Bank and is based in Washington DC, USA. He has more than 25 years of experience in agriculture and food systems, digitalization, public-private partnership, farmer producer organizations, research and development, innovative financing, and knowledge management. He has worked in Australia, Central Asia, Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, South and South-East Asia, South America, and USA.
Previously Dr. Mostafa worked as Senior Agriculture Economist in the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) housed at the World Bank and as Governance Advisor in the CGIAR Fund Office at the World Bank. He was Executive Manager of Corporate Strategy, Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) in Australia. He was a member of the Management Committee of Crop Biofactories Initiative, jointly funded by GRDC and the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) and served as Co-Chair of the Sustainable Food Systems Working Group of the United Nations Zero Hunger Challenge. He has held several positions in the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) and the Australian Government Department of Finance. As Assistant Professor of Economics and Finance, Dr. Mostafa taught in the School of Business at Saint Bonaventure University, New York.
Dr. Mostafa holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA and is an alumnus of the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Switzerland. He has published several articles and blogs on agriculture, food systems and digital technology.
Our speakers kindly provided these resources for further learning.
From Cristina Rumbaitis del Rio
From Maha Al-Zu’bi
From Dan Gilligan
From Lina Yassin
To learn more about how GHV partners with organizations working in climate, agriculture, and nutrition, please reach out to Managing Director of Climate, Health and Development Temina Lalani-Shariffat temina.shariff@ghvisions.com
