IRRI's Environmental Agenda

Preface

The environment will always feel the impact of agriculture, not the least of which is rice farming. Rice is the staple food of almost 3 billion people, and rice farms cover around 150 million hectares—more than any other crop. Rice production, much of which takes place in flooded paddies, has unique and profound implications for the environment and the livelihood of the people depending on it. Hence, environmental sustainability is a key component of the sustainable rice ecosystem.

In 2002, an IRRI work group, led by scientists James Hill and Suan Pheng Kam, embarked on the development of a natural resource management strategy to guide our research in all rice-based systems. This effort was uplifted and broadened by Emanuel A.S. Serrão, a respected Brazilian member of our Board of Trustees who suggested that IRRI should take a more holistic view on the sustainability of both rice production and the environment. He encouraged the Institute to establish an environmentally based guiding principle for all the activities we do and the impact we try to achieve. With the full support of our BOT during its September 2002 meeting, IRRI management decided to move forward to pursue Dr. Serrão’s recommendation. In January 2003, Ren Wang, our deputy director general for research, established a staff task force to develop IRRI’s Environmental Agenda (IEA), which is detailed in this booklet.

I thank the team composed of Sushil Pandey (chair), Gene Hettel (vice chair), Bas Bouman, Darshan Brar, Ruaraidh Sackville Hamilton, Arnold Manza, Casiana Vera Cruz, and Duncan Macintosh (resource person). They have done extensive literature searches and hours and hours of hard work drafting and redrafting this historically significant document and consulting with IRRI staff to crystallize the seven key issues that encompass the IEA.

I also thank two external experts who provided assistance to the IRRI team in conceptualizing and drafting the IEA: Xuan Zengpei of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, who has been involved extensively in China’s environmental policy development, and Yueh Kwong Leong of the Socioeconomic and Environmental Research Institute, Malaysia.

Concern for the environment has long been apparent in IRRI’s research but, to take the environmental approach in a more holistic way, to consciously commit to conserving the environment and achieving sustainable development, and to package it as a published agenda, I think, is something unique among the Future Harvest Centers of the CGIAR.

The IEA is an institutional commitment to the effect that we will build environmental principles into the guiding framework of our program activities and extend the benefits to the farthest corners of Asia and beyond.

We decided it would be fitting to launch the IEA at a significant event during the International Year of Rice 2004. So, we selected the World Rice Research Conference in Japan, being the most important—and culminating—scientific event of the IYR, as the most appropriate occasion.

We believe that the IEA will guide IRRI toward achieving a “Doubly Green Revolution,” as well as bring the Institute to a higher level of strength and sophistication in producing international public goods for the world.

      Ronald P. Cantrell
   Director General, IRRI

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