Reforming Rice Production Could Help Reduce Greenhouse Gases

As delegates at a global warming conference hash out the best ways to reduce greenhouse gases, one of the problems - and a possible solution - may lie just outside Thailand's teeming capital in the country's rice fields.
 
  The flooded paddies may at first seem inconsequential when compared to China's coal-fired power plants or the diesel-spewing buses that ply Manila's streets.
 
  But the report from the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change meeting this week in Bangkok concludes that rice production is one of the main causes of rising methane emissions - which are 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide and contribute to both rising temperatures and creation of harmful ozone near the ground.
 
  Reforming the sector, the draft report says, along with changes in livestock practices could reduce methane emissions from agriculture by 15% to 56%.
 
  "There is no other crop that is emitting such a large amount of greenhouse gases," said Reiner Wassmann, coordinator of the rice and climate change consortium at International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines.
 
  "Methane emissions are unique to rice," he said, adding that rice fields also emits carbon dioxide when they are burned and nitrous oxide from fertilizer. "If Asian countries are exploring possibilities to reduce greenhouse gas, they have to look at rice production. I'm not saying it's the biggest source, but in Asia it's a source that cannot be neglected."
 
  Reforming rice production is among a raft of proposals being discussed this week in Bangkok at the IPCC as a way to cut global emissions of greenhouse gases below current levels.
 
  For many Asian countries, rice production may prove easier to overhaul than other recommendations in the IPCC draft report such as switching away from coal, which many fear would cripple their economies, experts said.
Technological fixes, such as solar power or carbon sequestration - which involves storing carbon dioxide emissions below ground - also are well beyond the budgets of many Asian governments.