Projects

Policy imperatives for Southeast Asia's regional food systems under climate change

Current
Photo: Georgina Smith/CIAT

Many Southeast Asian countries are fast changing with strong economic growth, population increase and rapid urbanization. With rising income, consumers in the region are diversifying their diet from staples to more high-value products such as meat, dairy products, fruits, and vegetables.

At the same time, these fast rising countries are highly vulnerable to extreme events such as drought, flooding, typhoons, salinity intrusions and sea level rise. The preparedness of these countries to advice farmers in high risk zones to diversify away from paddy to more climate resilient crops such as corn, legumes, roots and tubers in a timely manner could save livelihood of millions of small poor farmers.

The objective of this proposal is to develop policy and institutional framework to mitigate the effects of extreme weather events in high risk zones of Vietnam and the Philippines through policy dialogue and crop diversification. In a nutshell, the specific objectives can be broken down into the following two components. The first component focuses on generating and disseminating scientific evidence of benefits of crop diversification in rice-based cropping system. The second component specifically focuses on strengthening seed systems through policy reforms and private sector participation. The project aims to accelerate crop diversification in high risk zones of Vietnam and the Philippines and raises income of 100,000 farmers by 20%. This is expected to improve the sustainability of rice based systems and improve nutrition security.

Project Activities

To develop five tropically adopted potato varieties in public-private partnership model

GIS and secondary biophysical and socioeconomic data will be used to assess vulnerability.Some of the biophysical data include change in annual temperature, change in annual precipitation, frequency of extreme weather, soil depth and per capita arable land, average yield for major crops. Socioeconomic data include employment rate, GDP per capita, literacy rate, road length per square kilometer and percentage of population with higher degree. This will be combined with focus group discussion and key informant interviews of farmers, local officials and experts to develop map of high-risk area to climate changes. Once the high-risk zones are identified, suitability of climate resilient crop varieties for distinct environments are developed.

IMPACT model will be used conduct scenario analysis due to changes in demographics, income, diets, trade and climate change on agricultural productivity for Southeast Asia.

In 2019, a background study will be conducted on varietal release procedure and current seed system in Vietnam and the Philippines for climate resilient crops including roots and tubers. The study will identify the loopholes in seed certification process and ways to improve the system. Policy dialogue with national policy makers in both countries will be organized to apprise on the benefits of streamlining the national seed policy.

Prepare policy brief on the benefit of participating in seed sharing agreement and initiate the discussion with Vietnam and the Philippines on policy makers to participate in multi-country seed sharing agreement (popularly known as ?seed without borders?), facilitated by IRRI (http://irri.org/news/media-releases/agreement-on-multi-country-seed-sha…). Organize an exploratory visits of key policy makers to either India or Bangladesh to obtain first-hand information from the govt officials on the benefits of participating in seed sharing agreement for rice.

We are completing a study on examining seed value chain for climate resilient roots and tuber crops, seed replacement and certification procedure, varietal release process and seed trade and market in the Philippines. The findings of the study will be used as a white paper to co-organize a Seed Summit in early 2020 in partnership with the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The summit will be attended by different stakeholders including policy makers, farmers, researchers, private seed value chain actors and other non-government organizations involved in seed. The key recommendations from the Summit will be presented to the national and provincial policy makers. IFPRI will present baseline scenario results for key climate resilient commodities in the Philippines to 2030 and 2050 and alternate seed scenarios in Vietnam.

We are completing a study on examining seed value chain for climate resilient roots and tuber crops, seed replacement and certification procedure, varietal release process and seed trade and market in the Philippines. The findings of the study will be used as a white paper to co-organize a Seed Summit in early 2020 in partnership with the Vietnam Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VAAS) and IFPRI. The summit will be attended by different stakeholders including policy makers, farmers, researchers, private seed value chain actors and other non-government organizations involved in seed. The key recommendations from the Summit will be presented to the national and provincial policy makers to improve seed value chain of climate resilient crops. IFPRI will present baseline scenario results for key climate resilient commodities in the Philippines to 2030 and 2050 and alternate seed scenarios in Vietnam.

In cooperation with MARD, FAO, IPSARD, we are planning to organize a forum on NDC implementation to validate concept notes catalogue for NDC implementation prepared by CIAT/the Alliance. This forum will seek to promote a One CG approach to support NDC revision and implementation in Vietnam.

Building on the outcomes of the One CG NDC implementation forum for Vietnam, which took place successfully in 2020, we received a request from MARD to continue provide technical support for the implementation of NDC. We have built a concept notes catalogues that will likely be integrated in MARD NDC action plan and we will seek to engage with a range of stakeholders (government and donors) to identify opportunites to move towards implementing these potential projects. In that framework, we will organize regular policy engagement between One CG, MARD and other actors.

Project Deliverables

2019