Time for Better Collective Climate Action in ASEAN Agrifood Production

Recent severe weather events in Southeast Asia such as floods, temperature spikes, and drought reinforce the reality that ASEAN’s agriculture environment has become more volatile and uncertain. Perceptions of climate impact on agricultural production and food security have also been affirmed through the recent ISEAS Southeast Asia Climate Outlook Survey (SEACO2024), where almost a third of the respondents indicated they are “very concerned” that climate change will affect their access to affordable food.

Agriculture suffers from the impacts of climate change and at the same time is also a major cause of climate change. Agriculture reportedly accounts for up to a third of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions responsible for global warming, especially from crop production, land clearing (deforestation) for agriculture, and livestock. The potent GHG, methane, is emitted by livestock rearing (like cattle) and rice growing where flooded paddy fields allow certain bacteria to decay organic matter into methane.

Within ASEAN, discussion of climate change’s impact on agriculture and food security inevitably has to consider the overall food supply-demand situation and also the import dependency of the region in specific food items. Adverse weather would reduce the production of rice, seafood, and vegetable oil and impact their supply not only for ASEAN Member States (AMS) but also for extra-ASEAN countries, such as India which heavily imports palm oil from the region. However, ASEAN imports much soybean, maize, wheat, and beef, hence inclement weather in these commodities’ main export countries will mean supply shortages to ASEAN. The ensuing price hikes will have flow-through effects on other industries that depend on them, such as poultry production which uses soybean for feed.

Climate action to mitigate or adapt must balance the need for more food produced through agriculture while simultaneously reducing agriculture’s contribution to global warming. ASEAN countries have started to implement both climate mitigation and adaptation measures, albeit in a haphazard manner, leaving policy-setting and execution to individual countries’ capabilities.  However, ASEAN must collectively act to resolve the concurrent climate change challenges in agriculture, such as the impact of adverse weather on food supplies or the sharing of mitigation technologies.

ASEAN countries differ in their food security—generally considered to be the capacity to make available food at affordable prices to meet dietary needs—which is one of agriculture’s key outcomes. Rice remains the main food security crop for ASEAN. Going forward, any initiative to ensure sustainable food security will have to take into account rice security. But rice is also the single highest emitter of methane, a potent GHG, in Southeast Asia, and efforts to increase rice yield inevitably lead to more methane emitted.

ASEAN countries have started to implement both climate mitigation and adaptation measures, albeit in a haphazard manner, leaving policy-setting and execution to individual countries’ capabilities.

In this regard, Vietnam is exemplary in setting a clear, measurable target to reduce GHGs through its “One Million Hectare low emission rice” initiative, in which it has pledged to reduce GHG emissions by 30 per cent by 2030, by targetting rice production with methane reduction through cultivation practices. Vietnam is incorporating the rice initiative into its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC). An expansion of Vietnam’s initiative to other ASEAN rice-producing countries would be an important step in the right direction to fight global warming. 

Within ASEAN, many existing mechanisms facilitate anticipatory action on climate change (e.g. ASEAN Multisectoral Framework on Climate Change and Food Security (AFCCFS) or enable appropriate responses to deal with the outcomes of climate change (e.g. ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response (AADMER). In addition, ASEAN has promulgated softer guidelines that are voluntary in nature but which also indirectly or directly contribute to climate action (e.g. ASEAN Regional Guidelines for Promoting Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) Practices).

In addition to these mechanisms and guidelines, the umbrella guide for regional collaboration in ASEAN has been the “Vision and Strategic Plan of Action on Food, Agriculture and Forestry, 2016-2025”.  Climate change and food security are embedded in this plan, which was developed pre-2016 with updates at five-year intervals. However, climate change has emerged as a much bigger issue during this period, hence it is important that ASEAN seriously considers how to be innovative toward collectively tackling climate change in the post-2025 years.

Collective action can also be bolstered by contributions from national initiatives in AMS, such as Singapore’s Centre for Climate Research Singapore (CCRS), which has offered to share regional climate data with other AMS to help predict climate impact on agricultural land use and food production. The private sector has also invested in climate mitigation and adaptation with business models that seemingly provide benefits to both smallholder farmers and the environment at large. An example is Rize, a rice decarbonisation company set up by an investor group which includes Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, to increase farmer adoption of a suite of farming practices such as “Alternate-Wetting-and-Drying (AWD)” of rice fields, which reportedly can reduce methane emissions by 30-40 per cent.

Going forward, ASEAN’s post-2025 strategy and policy plans can leverage a combination of AMS national action, ASEAN multi-lateral collaboration, investments from private equity, and public-private partnerships (PPPs) to concertedly reduce the impact of climate change on agriculture and food production. The different ASEAN mechanisms and guidelines, with possibly some new ones, could provide a framework for collective action. 

Political, policy, and funding support through forums such as the ASEAN Ministers of Agriculture and Forestry (AMAF) would be required. The ASEAN Secretariat could facilitate coordination and help the region maintain its focus on climate action.  All of this would align well with calls at the recent ASEAN Summit in Laos for a more integrated approach to solving a complex challenge that affects all member states.

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