The 7th ASEAN Climate Resilience Network (ASEAN-CRN) Annual Meeting was convened virtually on 19 April 2022. It served as an outlet for the focal points and development partners to revisit the previous year’s achievement, work plan and prioritise actions forward from the topics’ collection. The ASEAN-CRN aligned its activities and inputs to contribute to the Vision and Strategic Plan for ASEAN Cooperation in Food, Agriculture and Forestry (2016-2025) and other regional priority areas in climate change and the land-use sector.
The host country for the 2022 Annual Meeting was the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation (MOALI) Myanmar, co-chaired with the Department of Agriculture (DOA), Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives (MOAC) Thailand as the ASEAN-CRN Chair.
Toward achieving a collective vision
In the welcoming remarks, the Chair has emphasised the importance of accepting the amendments to the Network’s Terms of Reference that will give a mandate to the ASEAN-CRN Secretariat/Coordination Unit. However, this will need a separate meeting for further exchange, as suggested by the ASEAN Secretariat.
Newly appointed focal points joined the Network and attended the annual meeting for the first time, a good opportunity for re-engagement. In the meeting, some ASEAN Member States (AMS) focal points shared updates on the country’s activities relevant to climate change and agriculture.
The Meeting discussed the result of the COP26 on the agriculture and land-use sector. It shared the stakeholders’ climate foresight exercise from the previous umbrella initiative event series in March 2022 entitled “Scaling up Climate Actions for Resilient and Low Emission Landscapes in Asia and Pacific: In the Lead up to COP27 “.
This climate foresight and scenarios showed a collective long-term vision that resonates as pollution-free and able to give healthy food to all. It has helped the focal points prioritise and support their countries’ climate pledges. It aided ASEAN in its mission to develop short and long-term agricultural strategies in the face of climate change. For the Network’s priorities, the CRN focal points selected climate change and land-use sector scaling-up best practices and implementation, technical knowledge exchange events in the region among the top priorities for topics and activities in 2022. The network’s focal point showed their interested in research collaborations, knowledge sharing, and climate finance, especially with private sector. They would like ASEAN-CRN to support capacity building and knowledge/ technology/ information sharing. The network is interested to know more about resilient agriculture, nature-based solutions, net-zero agriculture, and food systems.
Regional priorities and frameworks
In response to these priorities, the ASEAN Secretariat provided relevant regional climate policies, namely the Regional Guidelines for Sustainable Agriculture in ASEAN, the decarbonisation strategies, nature-based solutions, among others, that affect the work of the ASEAN-CRN and AMS agriculture sectors. This corresponds with the expressed interest of the ASEAN-CRN in supporting, particularly in long-term strategies and monitoring, reporting and Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) for agriculture.
The proposed priority topics with potential activities and timeframes will turn into the work plan with a specific timeline and submit to ATWGARD for a response. The focal points agreed that the work plan will now be considered a living document for a regular update to make room for all developments in the AMS work. The Network’s Secretariat/Coordination Unit can enhance the existing version based on the prioritization exercise done during the Meeting. Then, it will circulate the work plan for updating and consolidating among the focal points what is important and feasible per year until 2025.
The Meeting also highlighted a summary of development agencies doing relevant works on agriculture and climate change within the region for ASEAN-CRN to continue the partnership or as a future potential partner.
Supporting partners
The development partners supporting the host country and ASEAN-CRN Chair in organizing the 2022 Annual Meeting are the GIZ ASEAN AgriTrade project with funding from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the UN FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, and the Global Alliance for Climate Smart Agriculture (GACSA), in close cooperation with the ASEAN Secretariat.
The report and other material will be available on The 7th ASEAN-CRN Annual Meeting Event Documentation page.