- The Better Rice Initiative Cambodia (BRIC) was launched to foster national collaboration in tackling the interconnected challenges of agriculture, climate change, and food security.
- Ensuring farmers’ needs are addressed to close current gaps and shortcomings in adopting climate-smart rice cultivation practices is indispensable.
- Understanding farm activities and benefits from implementing MRV activities are important priorities.
Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 16-21 February 2025— Food and nutrition security are fundamental to human health, economic prosperity, and social stability, especially in regions where agriculture is a primary livelihood, such as Southeast Asia. Rice is at the heart of concurrent climate change mitigation discussions, given its significant contribution to global methane emissions. While rice farming is a source of greenhouse gases, it is also highly vulnerable to climate change-induced extreme weather effects.
As a step towards sustainable food systems, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ) in collaboration with the Council of Agriculture and Rural Development (CARD) and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) of Cambodia, and the European Union, hosted the Future Forum: Sustaining Food Systems—Securing Futures in Cambodia from 16 to 21 February 2025.
At the forum, the Better Rice Initiative Cambodia (BRIC) was launched that aims to foster national collaboration in tackling the interconnected challenges of agriculture, climate change, and food security. BRIC partners are the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ), Olam Agri, Council of Agriculture and Rural Development (CARD), Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) of Cambodia, the European Union, and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). The event also served as a collaboration platform to further IRRI’s Accelerating the Scaling of Low Emissions Rice (AcceLER) project, funded by Global Methane Hub. As such, the event helped connect experts in their experiences and viewpoints on low emission rice research and amplifying the benefits for rice farmers adopting low emission rice cultivation methodologies.
The exchanges crystalized the need for quality baseline data, a robust Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) system to continuously collect emission and farming activity data, as well as the co-benefits for the individual stakeholders implementing emission data collection, verification and reporting strategies. “MRV requires robust and verifiable data collection”, Bjoern Ole Sander (IRRI Thailand Country Representative and Senior Scientist) commented during one of the discussions. He continued that “we must ensure that we have a good understanding of the baseline on farm activities and that benefits from implementing MRV activities are quantifiable for farmers, too.”
To ensure that farmers’ needs are appropriately addressed, assessing, documenting, and addressing current gaps and shortcomings in adopting climate-smart rice cultivation practices is indispensable. Participatory climate risk maps can support this endeavour. Afterall, to change environmental impacts requires changing social behavior by means of adopting modern farming technologies, including the mechanization and diversification of cultivation practices.
As a reminder, countries from Southeast Asia have committed to reducing their agricultural emissions as port of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement:
- Cambodia targets a 34.4% reduction in agricultural emissions by 2030, focusing on methane reduction in rice cultivation.
- Indonesia aims for a 29% reduction in emissions by 2030, with rice production playing a key role.
- Lao PDR is committed to a 60% reduction in emissions by 2050, emphasizing climate-smart rice practices.
- The Philippines has set an ambitious 75% emissions reduction target by 2030, with rice farming contributing nearly 30% of its methane emissions.
- Thailand is promoting climate-smart rice production through its Thai Rice GCF project.
- Viet Nam is adopting sustainable rice farming techniques, with a goal of reducing emissions by 9% unconditionally and 27% with international support.
The Future Forum has led to distilling insights and policy recommendations which will serve further down the rod as key inputs for upcoming global platforms in 2025, including the Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit, the UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS), and the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP). This forum’s collective exchanges will contribute to making Southeast Asia accelerate its climate smart agriculture strategies.