The Adaptation and Mitigation Initiatives in Agriculture (AMIA) in this report are designed for a sector – rice cultivation – that is extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and commonly associated with food security. However, agriculture also contributes to more than 30 per cent of the GHG emissions in the Philippines and is the second largest GHG emission source in the country. Although rice cultivation occupies the top position among the sources of agricultural emissions, this emission source has not been addressed by any major climate change-related activities up to the present.

This AMIA will target a total of 750,000 ha of irrigated rice fields, approximately half of the irrigated rice fields across the whole country. The introduction of Alternative Wetting and Drying in these flooded irrigated rice fields could potentially bring approximately 12,151 ktCO2e/yr of emission reductions by 2020. This will represent a sizeable mitigation effect, decreasing GHG emissions from rice cultivation by close to 25 per cent. The AMIA is developed as a result-oriented and bankable document with a clear exit strategy that allows it to become self-sufficient after the initial support from donors is completed.