FPTPEC David Ménascé of Archipel&Co spoke with Thomas Ricolfi of AXA Climate Advisory to unpack what resilience and food sovereignty really mean, particularly for the Asia-Pacific region.

During the conversation, Ricolfi described food resilience as the capacity of food systems to absorb shocks through diversification, made urgent by the accelerating pace of climate change. He distinguished resilience from sovereignty, which is a policy choice concerning how governments manage their dependencies within food supply chains which can encompass maintaining control over key elements of food supply chains, including trade, logistics, and procurement arrangements.

He illustrates this with Japan and the Gulf economies. Japan imports roughly 60% of the calories it consumes — corn, soybeans, wheat, chicken — yet it has secured a form of sovereignty by controlling the shipping routes and trading houses that move those calories into the economy. Gulf economies follow a similar logic: nobody expects them to grow grain in the desert, but they still pursue food sovereignty through strategic control elsewhere in the chain.

The conversation also examined the implications of climate change for agricultural risk management and insurance. Ricolfi noted that insurance depends on pooling risk across places where shocks do not hit simultaneously. However, climate change is increasingly producing correlated disasters — droughts hitting multiple breadbaskets at once, or cyclones sweeping across the small, low-lying nations of the Pacific – making risk management more complicated.

Regarding practical responses, Ricolfi suggested widening the pool by building risk-sharing mechanisms that span whole regions or entire value chains rather than single economies, since a single cyclone can flatten an entire small nation's harvest. This may require pairing insurance with serious upfront investment — in smarter irrigation, less water-dependent farming systems — financed jointly by governments, regional aid bodies, downstream businesses exposed to supply disruption, and investment funds, since no single actor can shoulder the scale of transformation needed.

Challenges facing Asia-Pacific's small farmers were discussed. Ricolfi observed that because most of them operate just 1-3 hectares, they have difficulty accessing insurance mechanisms. He thus suggested that intermediaries namely cooperatives, NGOs, and aggregators who organize farmers, deliver training, and manage collective policies can play an important role in improving their access to insurance.

The conversation concluded with reflections on the future of climate resilience in agriculture. Ricolfi argued that the real threat is not a single tipping-point temperature, but the sheer rising volatility of the climate itself. In his view, strengthening food resilience will require a combination of adaptation measures, innovative risk-management approaches, and greater cooperation among governments, businesses, and other stakeholders. 

The interview with Thomas Ricolfi, who leads food resilience at AXA Climate, builds momentum ahead of the seminar on Food Resilience and Sovereignty in Hanoi in October 2026.

*Click here for the program on Food Resilience and Sovereignty seminar.