It’s a question we have been reflecting on. Not because the answer is dramatic, but because it’s an opportunity to learn, and improve. Systems change is slow, requires collaboration, and is rarely attributable to any single actor. We know this. We work in spaces where progress is measured in nudges: a policy window opened, a connection made between people who needed to find each other, evidence placed in front of a decision-maker at the right moment. We are one part of a much larger ecosystem working toward the same goal.
2025 was a year that tested that ecosystem. Aid budgets contracted, multilateral cooperation became harder to sustain, and the political will to act on food and climate grew harder to find. At the same time, the urgency intensified: climate shocks and conflict, guided by policies designed for a different era and geopolitical context, compounding their effects on the world’s most vulnerable food systems and the people who depend on them.
In this context, every contribution matters. This annual report is our attempt to be specific about ours.
We’ve structured it around eight stories from 2025, each framed by the same question: what would have happened if Clim-Eat hadn’t been there? In some cases the answer is: something similar would have happened, more slowly, with less coherence across actors. In others, the specific combination of relationships, evidence, and facilitation that Clim-Eat brought was harder to replicate. In all cases, these stories represent early steps as part of lasting systems change. The outcomes we care most about, a flexible, inclusive and innovative ecosystem of actors that is working towards resilient and sustainable food systems in LMICs.
We share these stories not as a victory lap, but as a learning tool: to understand where our contribution is genuinely catalytic, to identify where the next opportunities lie, and to be honest about where we still have more to do.
