Rice is a staple for more than half of the world’s population and forms an essential part of the diet in most Asian countries including Pakistan, and it is responsible for 10% of global anthropogenic methane emissions each year. Methane emissions from rice production amount to 7.83 Mt CO2-eq per year for Pakistan.
Through wide-scale adoption of water management practices such as alternate wetting and drying (AWD), the rice sector could mitigate as much as 48% of global methane emissions from paddy rice. However, rice management is frequently cited without specifics on how mitigation will be achieved, indicating a need for greater clarity in technology assessment, impact monitoring, and capacity building in this area.
Private sector engagement is widely recognized as a decisive factor in driving technology adoption and upscaling. This holds true for low-emission field management in rice because rice supply chain actors and input providers have distinct interests in promoting wide-scale uptake of best practices at the farm level. Moreover, large parts of the rice value chain, e.g. milling, are in the hand of private enterprises. However, as is seen for other agricultural commodities, limited information exchange and coordination among the many rice value chain actors frequently constrain short-lived climate pollutant mitigation efforts.