Enhancing mitigation plans for the livestock and paddy rice sectors in Vietnam

Vietnam is exploring ways to make rice production more climate-friendly. Since 2014, Vietnam has participated in a Coalition and IRRI project that supports countries and farmers to adopt sustainable rice production practices that reduce methane emissions, while maintaining, and often even improving, rice yields.

IRRI conducted activities in Vietnam to identify priority areas for Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD)— a key mitigation technology identified in Vietnam’s NDC that can reduce methane emissions from rice paddies by as much as 48 per cent. During Phase II of this project, GIS-based suitability maps and a greenhouse gas calculator tool were developed to support national and local governments in the outscaling of short-lived climate pollutant mitigation practices. Two important new activities were also identified for Phase III: supporting the private sector on short-lived climate pollutant mitigation with decision support tools and increasing finance to replicate large scale methane reduction activities from paddy rice in Vietnam

As part of the drafting and consultations for Vietnam's Animal Husbandry Law, the Coalition's Solution Centre and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development surveyed mitigation options for livestock production in all provinces to identify and prioritize mitigation options to reduce methane from livestock production in Vietnam's updated NDC.

Ongoing agricultural institutional strengthening work in Vietnam aims to:
 

• increase awareness of short-lived climate pollutant issues and actions taken by the government and other national actors and stakeholders
• increase national awareness of the specific impacts and mitigation potential of measures in the agricultural sector
• increase inter-ministerial collaboration and commitment to enhancing agriculture short-lived climate pollutant mitigation in NDCs and projects
• improve access to new and sustained financing to implement agriculture short-lived climate pollutant reduction programmes at scale

Agriculture is Vietnam’s second largest source of emissions, contributing about 33% of total greenhouse gas emissions in 2010 (MONRE, 2014). Rice is the most important crop for Vietnam. Vietnam harvests around 7.4 million hectares of rice annually, and methane emissions from rice production account for 50% of its agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and 33% of its total greenhouse gas emissions. Vietnam’s rice sector is also vulnerable to climate change, particularly sea level rise and extreme climatic events. 

Livestock production activities account for 32% of total greenhouse gas emissions from the agriculture sector, of which enteric fermentation, manure management, manure left on pasture and manure applied on the field accounted for 14%, 10%, 5% and 3% respectively.  

To implement the Prime Minister’s Decision No 2053/QD-TTG declaring Vietnam’s action plan to implement the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the government included alternate wetting and drying as an agriculture mitigation measure to tackle emissions from rice cultivation, and the development of its Animal Husbandry Law to tackle emissions from livestock in the National Development Agenda of the 14th National Assembly of Vietnam (2016-2021).