Climate and nutrition smart villages as platforms to address food insecurity in Myanmar
Programs and partnerships
Lead institution(s)
Summary
Myanmar is at risk from a wide range of natural hazards, including cyclones, floods, and droughts. These risks are especially challenging for poor rural women and children, who suffer even more from hunger, food insecurity, and a lack of adequate health services.Read more
Myanmar is at risk from a wide range of natural hazards, including cyclones, floods, and droughts. These risks are especially challenging for poor rural women and children, who suffer even more from hunger, food insecurity, and a lack of adequate health services. Since these risks differ across agro-ecosystems in the country, it is crucial that adaptation measures recognize the value of targeted, location-specific, community-based strategies and processes.
Community-based adaptation approaches have been tested in the Philippines for the past three years and are currently being mainstreamed via national government processes. This project builds on lessons from these methodological, institutional, and model-building research efforts leveraging the linkages between agriculture, climate change, and nutrition.
The goal of this project is to identify and scale optimal climate-smart agriculture practices and interventions suitable for the four major agro-ecological regions of Myanmar: the central dry zone, the mountain uplands, the upland-plateau, and the delta.
Using participatory research methods, the study, implemented by the New York City-based International Institute for Rural Reconstruction, will assess a portfolio of low-cost technologies and interventions in selected locations that serve as Climate Smart Villages. Towards the end of the project, scalable models will lead to guidelines for promoting a number of proven approaches that farmers can select for their specific agro-ecological zones.
Research outputs
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This compilation of stories from Myanmar’s climate smart villages (CSV) provides a glimpse into how individual households are affected by CSVs. At least 600 smallholder farming households have benefitted. They received resources to implement and test adaptation options, with enhanced learning through training, workshops, and opportunities to engage with other farmers and organizations. This three-year project saw villagers across CSVs organize themselves into groups to address climate-related risks in their communities. It has helped improve the capacity of villagers in adapting to climate change impacts. As well, groups that emerged from CSVs have become critical platforms for innovation.
Sakta village is located in the Hakha Township, Chin State, which is one of the least developed areas of Myanmar with the highest poverty rate of all regions. Unprecedented extreme rainfalls have caused serious landslides. Most of the agricultural lands in Sakta village are rainfed uplands where communities still practice shifting cultivation. Climate Smart Agriculture options are very locally specific and the options vary depending on agro-ecological zones and local culture. Some Indigenous practices which communities are using traditionally are already climate smart and just need to be refined or enriched.
This report provides a background assessment of Htee Pu village in Nyaung Oo township, in the Dry Zone of Myanmar. Main economic activities are subsistence farming such as rice paddy, sesame, pigeon pea, groundnut, and small-scale livestock rearing. Irregular farm incomes limit the purchase and effective use of quality inputs, including seed, fertilizer, pesticide, and labor. Food insecurity is a primary constraint for Dry Zone communities, where water is scarce, vegetation cover is thin, and soil is degraded due to severe erosion. The situation is characterized by a reliance on market purchase for food access in a context of low, undiversified, agriculture-based incomes, high debts, and reliance on credit.
Although agriculture is the major subsistence livelihood, the harshness of climate conditions including low and unpredictable annual rainfall are most serious limiting factors for HteePuvillage. Nyaung U has the lowest annual rainfall among dry zones of Myanmar. Diversification and intensification are key elements in the climate smart agriculture (CSA) strategy. Many households have been introduced to three types of pulses (Lab Lab, Lima bean, and cowpea) which have local market potential. Future work will include enrichment planning of community forests with multiple use tree and grass species to serve as “banks” in case of long droughts.
The farmer learning sessions are interventions directed at increasing the knowledge and skills of target farmers in the climate smart villages (CSV) about climate smart practices in agriculture production. These sessions will support farmers as they innovate, test and learn from the various climate smart agriculture (CSA) options they previously identified. Learning session topics include: 1) What is Climate Change? 2. What causes Climate Change? 3. What is greenhouse gases (GHG)? 4. How does agriculture contributes to GHG? 5. What are concepts of CSA? 6. What are the practices of CSA?