What is Sustainable Rice Platform (SRP)? Why You Must Know About It?

Sustainable Rice Platform (SRP), which is a platform for multi stakeholders, is co-convened by the International Rice Research Institute and United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP).  The objective is to encourage efficiency of resources and operations of production and consumption, sustainable trade flows, and supply chains in the rice sector globally.

Importance of Sustainable Rice Platform

The global rice sector features high domestic consumption. This sector is highly fragmented. It is also characterized by huge South-South bulk trade flows, along with a certain amount of well-coordinated North-North and South-North supply chains.

This is not all. Rice is the staple food of a huge chunk of the world’s population. The political economy of rice trade is to be understood because rice crop has a strong political and public significance.

The platform aims towards providing a two-stream approach to develop public policy and voluntary initiatives that transform the market.

Mission of Sustainable Rice Platform

The mission of SRP is to non-profit, private, and public players in the global rice sector that feature sustainable rice cultivation standards and outreach mechanisms that add to the global rice supply, which his affordable. The players’ efforts should also contribute to the enhancement of livelihood of rice growers and to the reduction in the environmental impact of producing rice.

Chief objectives of SRP

• To develop a modular standard that promotes sustainable rice production and rice processing.

• To create and promote outreach models that facilitate wider adoption of best practices in rice production, supply chain, and policy development.

• To give the world a platform that is recognized globally and that encourages constant enhancement in sustainable rice production and its industry as a whole.

Constituents of SRP

SRP comprises government bodies, NGOs, research institutes, and players from the private sector.

The standards and models are developed and implemented keeping in mind the farmers, an increased involvement of farmers is expected.

SRP has an advisory committee that gives valuable guidance on strategy making and ensures the platform achieves its goals and complies by the UN rules and regulations. The platform has working groups that focus on implementing plans.

The secretariat of SRP is at UNEP. It provides support to the advisory committee and to the working groups. The secretariat is responsible for coordinating administration and operations of the SRP.

SRP members meet annually to create future plans and review the activities done so far.