Issued by the First Global Sustainable Rice Conference, 4‐5 October 2017, UN Conference Centre, UN Building, Bangkok, Thailand

We, delegates meeting in Bangkok at the First Global Sustainable Rice Conference from 4‐5 October 2017;

Considering the critical role of rice in global food security, grown by 150 million smallholders, mostly in Asia, and serving as the main staple for 70% of the world’s 815 million food‐insecure;

Acknowledging the need to boost global rice production to meet projected global supply shortfall by 2050, when demand will reach about 600 million metric tonnes, leading to an increasing annual requirement of 100 million metric tons of rice for every 1 billion people added to the global population;

Concerned over the extreme and increasing vulnerability of the livelihoods of millions of smallholder rice producers to the impacts of climate change;

Recognizing the major contributions of rice to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions in the agriculture sector of producing countries, amounting to an estimated 500 million tons of emissions CO2e/year, representing up to 50% of agricultural emissions in some rice‐producing countries and 10% of all agriculture sector emissions worldwide;

Mindful of the extreme vulnerability of rice to the impacts of climate change, including rising sea levels in deltaic regions, extreme weather events, temperature rise, salinity, droughts and flooding, with forecasts projecting yield losses and rising prices as a direct result of climate change by 2050;

Acknowledging the high social and environmental footprint of rice in terms of resource use (water, agrochemicals, labour, energy) and their impacts on food safety, outflows of rural labour, gender inequality, rural community health and the environment (including environmental contamination, human health impacts from over‐use of agrochemicals, which also impact on biodiversity and provision of ecosystem goods and services), with rice accounting for 30‐40% of the world’s irrigation water, and 13% of global nitrogen fertilizer use;

Welcoming the availability of proven climate‐smart technologies and tools to address climate change impacts, enhance resilience and boost water and fertilizer use efficiency in rice‐based cropping systems, including low‐cost technologies and farm management practices to eliminate stubble burning and reduce post‐harvest losses;

Appreciating the relevance and value of the SRP Standard for Sustainable Rice Cultivation, together with its associated Performance Indicators, as an objective science‐based approach to defining and monitoring sustainability across any rice agro‐ecosystem, as an accepted basis for certification for sustainable sourcing and as a normative basis for policy‐ making by the public sector to move the entire rice sector towards adoption of more sustainable production;

See more: http://irri.org/news/media-releases/srp-bangkok-declaration-sustainable-rice