D.3 Practices to mitigate environmental risks

Box D.2, continued

largest user of pesticides, at 15 percent (Zhang, Jiang, and ou 2011). china’s average pesticide consumption was reportedly two-and-a-half times the world average and was still increasing as of 2014, although its growth has slowed in the 2010s, and a number of toxic chemicals have been banned or are being phased out (Gao et al. 2017).

Within the focus countries in East Asia, Malaysia is the next most intensive user of pesticides after china. Vietnam’s use of pesticides is more moderate, but, as with fertilizer, its geographic concentration in major crop production areas makes it a concern, and changes in cropping patterns and pest resistance may have since driven more intensive use. In the philippines, overall pesticide use is not only lower, but recently has been falling. nevertheless, the use of pesticides in the country’s large-scale, commercial fruit plantations is shrouded in statistical opacity and is abundant by some accounts (Havemann and Rosenthal 2015; Magcale-Macandog et al. 2016).

Source: Cassou, Jaffee, and Ru 2017.

Practices to mitigate environmental risks

Some common practices and examples of environmentally sustainable practices include the following:

• Agricultural soil restoration and rehabilitation.

Soil organic matter enrichment, crop rotation, appropriate tillage and management practices • Soil conservation. plot-level soil management, appropriate siting of crop production within the farm or landscape, vegetative cover on farmed and nonfarmed land, vegetative and earth barriers to soil movement • Improved management of surface or groundwater. on-site water and soil management, re-vegetation, investment in water harvesting structures • Improved management of irrigation and stream flow. Well-designed drainage systems, flood control structures, strategic siting of infrastructure, controlled diversion of water for irrigation and industrial or urban use • Improved agrochemical input management. Best practices in agrochemical application, vegetative and structural barriers • Permanent vegetative cover. using cover crops; retaining areas of natural perennial grasses, trees,

or palms; intercropping or retaining productive trees and shrubs in cropland • Native habitat restoration. Farm and community habitat networks and habitat set-asides, protected area establishment and restoration, connectivity between communities and protected areas • Wildlife protection in and around production areas.

Maintaining wildlife access to uncontaminated water and food sources, enabling mobility across farm fields; hunting and gathering at sustainable levels; using integrated pest management systems • Diversification of land cover. Multicropping, using multiple crop varieties or cultivars; farm diversification; community or landscape diversification • Greenhouse gas mitigation. Asia has the highest total technical mitigation potential in the world, via carbon sequestration through enhanced cropland and grazing land management, restoring organic soils and degraded lands, better practices in rice management, and reduced deforestation and degradation (Smith et al. 2014).

Sources: McNeely and Scherr 2003; Scherr et al. 2015; Smith et al. 2014; WOCAT 2007.