Partnerships
and Regions

“In the face of climate change in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, success is not possible without partnership.”

Jean Balié

Regional Director, Southeast Asia and the Pacific

Southeast Asia and the Pacific (SEAP) faces multiple challenges from climate change, particularly in relation to water. Flooding, sea level rise and salinization threaten the region’s coastal areas and major deltas, such as the Mekong and Irrawaddy, putting people and food systems at risk.

CGIAR worked actively throughout 2022 in facilitating decisions, chairing meetings, and encouraging dialogues to strategically position the CGIAR Regional Hub for Southeast Asia and the Pacific to work for the countries and partners in the region.

We take great pride in the active involvement and leadership roles of our scientists in activities such as the CGIAR Initiative on Asian Mega-Deltas to create resilient, inclusive, and productive deltas. In its initial year, the Initiative produced 84 knowledge products, mostly accessible online. Their contents focus on building learning alliances on diversified production systems, promoting nutrition-sensitive interventions, and developing digital climate advisory and bundled services, among other areas. The innovations were integrated into policies, and the AMD Initiative has attracted significant investment in the deltas from notable institutions.

In 2022, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Fiji joined six other countries as signatories to the Seeds Without Borders agreement. Fiji is the first Pacific Island nation to join the initiative, marking the expansion of the agreement to the Pacific Islands.

The team of the CGIAR regional hub for Southeast Asia and the Pacific presented the ASEAN-CGIAR Innovate for Food Regional Program at the 44th ASEAN Ministers on Agriculture and Forestry (AMAF) Meeting in Laos. This regional cooperation for research will help make ASEAN agri-food systems more resilient to climate change and fit for the purpose of delivering better livelihoods for food producers along the food value chain. The ASEAN-CGIAR Innovate for Food Regional Program is a cross-disciplinary and demand-driven program that intends to scale up and out bold integrated innovations for the ASEAN agri-food systems and has been co-created and co-designed with the ASEAN Member States.

These initiatives aim to support human prosperity and address urgent challenges in the Asia-Pacific region. In the coming year, CGIAR and the regionally based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) will continue to pursue dialogues to bolster opportunities for more collaborations vital for creating pragmatic and feasible approaches that work across borders, cultures, and disciplines.