Overview
This project aims to trial a modelling approach for quickly and efficiently determining the likely best options for changing agricultural practices in ways that deliver both mitigation and adaptation benefits.
The intented long-term outcome is to be able to accelerate the process of identifying the most promising options, and thus progress to trialling and scaling more quickly than has generally been done to date.
We will adapt the AgMIP (Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project) Regional Integrated Assessment (RIA) approach that has been implemented across Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia (published protocols available at www.agmip.org). The method links climate-crop/livestock-socioeconomic data, models and tools in order to assess the impacts of agricultural interventions, climate change, and other adaptation strategies. The framework of the method is novel in that it can also be used to conduct ‘simulation experiments’ to understand sustainable rice system options including locally adapted components of management interventions (e.g., diversified farming systems) to conditions that are either resource intensive (e.g., testing multiple cultivars, inputs, or changes in policies) or involve alternate future scenarios (e.g., climate change) to undertake in field trials alone.
We will leverage the data and crop simulation results from previous AgMIP work, and further obtain projections of future, regional climate conditions and socio-economic data, to evaluate the rice production systems under “current” and “future” climate conditions and assess the potential mitigation and adaptation co-benefits of sustainable rice management and other management practices in Bangladesh. This study will serve as an initial “pilot” for applying these methods more broadly and systematically to evaluate sustainable rice system options and cropping system diversification approaches across many countries using AgMIP methodology.
Project outcomes
- Directly integrating stakeholder feedback into the MAC-B assessment process and co-develop feasible interventions (focused on sustainable rice management and intensification) that may generate adaptation and mitigation co-benefits.
- Evaluating the effects of these interventions in current farming systems using multiple measures of mitigation, adaptation and development benefit, including measures of greenhouse gas emissions, resilience to climate variability, farmer livelihoods, gender, and nutrition.
- Evaluating the effects of the interventions on the multiple measures of benefit under future climate scenarios.
- Supporting policy development by convening a policy-makers round table to communicate the findings from the project and discuss policy implications for mitigation and adaptation programs.
- Strengthening capacity in all partners in using and applying AgMIP Regional Integrated Assessment methods.
