INTRODUCTION
The Sustainable Rice Platform (SRP) Plenary Meeting and General Assembly serves as an annual gathering of SRP members and partners from governments, international organizations, research institutes, private sector, and civil society groups to discuss experiences and insights in upscaling adoption of climate-smart, sustainable best practices in rice production.
This event provides a venue for SRP members and stakeholders to learn about latest developments, interact and explore potential collaborative opportunities to contribute towards rice sector transformation.
SUMMARY
This year’s theme: “The Future We Need – Upscaling climate-smart, sustainable best practice in the global rice sector” reflects the SRP’s goal of advancing wide-scale outreach by offering the global rice sector new tools, instruments and a collaborative platform to catalyze rice value chain transformation.
The SRP 8th Plenary Meeting and General Assembly was held in Siem Reap, Cambodia from 22-24 January 2019, in cooperation with the Wildlife Conservation Society and the International Finance Corporation (Cambodia), with support from IRRI (Cambodia Office).
Over 140 delegates from 24 countries around the world discussed emerging multi-stakeholder partnerships to mobilize the global rice sector towards sustainability.
His Excellency Veng Sakhon, Cambodia’s Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries presided over the event, and a welcome address was delivered by Dr Jacqueline Hughes (Deputy Director General for Research, IRRI). The keynote speech was delivered by Ms Kundhavi Kadiresan (Assistant Director General and Regional Representative, FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific).
This year’s event highlight was the launch of SRP’s latest tools and programmes as cornerstones for upscaling initiatives in support of SRP’s goal to encourage 1 million rice smallholder farmers to adopt sustainable best practices by 2021.
KEY OUTCOMES
- Key SRP tools and programmes were launched at the Opening Session, including Version 2.0 of the SRP Standard and Performance Indicators for Sustainable Rice Cultivation, the SRP Assurance Programme and the SRP Training Programme.
- At a meeting of the Cambodia National SRP Working Group, Dr Ngin Chhay, Director General of the Directorate General of Agriculture, accepted the role of Chair, and committed to establish a National Chapter for SRP in Cambodia.
- IRRI held a successful side event and reception on ‘Greenhouse gas mitigation in rice value chain’, which introduced the proposed IRRI-UNEP-SRP CCAC project: “Promoting Global Best Practices and Scaling of Low Emissions Technologies by Engaging the Private and Public Sector”.
- Project site visits were organized and led by the International Finance Corporation and Wildlife Conservation Society to Battambang and Kampong Thom provinces respectively. In its closed session on Day2, the SRP General Assembly elected a new Interim Board for 2019.
- A Chair will be elected at its inaugural meeting. The General Assembly also agreed on the need to establish a new legal entity for SRP. Presentation were made and discussed relation to two potential options.
- SRP members, partners and international rice stakeholders were invited to SRP’s next major event – the Second Global Sustainable Rice Conference and Exhibition, which will be held at the UN Conference Centre in Bangkok from 30 September to 2 October 2019.
The Presentations & Documents that have supported the discussions are available for download below:
- Presentations
- HIGHLIGHTS and KEY OUTCOMES
- Sustainable Rice Platform General Assembly
- SRP Annual Report 2018