When Nature Becomes the First Line of Climate Defence

From Crisis to Resilience in Asia’s Rice Heartlands
Climate Change Forces a Rethink of Farming Traditions
Ecological Farming Is Rewriting Climate Adaptation

Harnessing nature’s solutions and implementing natural pest and disease remedies for greater climate resilience in Asia and the Pacific is no longer confined to policy documents or academic research. In places where climate change has already begun to reorder daily life, these ideas are taking root in farmers’ fields, reshaping how communities understand risk, resilience and survival.

Nguyen Thi Thu Huong is not someone who normally breaks with tradition. The 56-year-old farmer, from Thanh Quoi commune deep within Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, has strictly followed traditional ways of rice cultivation handed down through generations. For decades, those inherited practices defined both her livelihood and her sense of continuity with the land. But, unlike earlier generations, Huong has witnessed first-hand how the intensifying impacts of climate change now threaten Vietnam’s rice basket and her family’s way of life.

“Things are not like before. The weather is changing. There are more and different pests. It’s harder to produce crops now,” said Huong, while casting an eye over the five-hectare cluster of emerald-coloured fields where she joins five others each day to toil under the hot tropical sun.

Climate change has triggered waves of invasive pests, such as the destructive fall armyworm, and plant diseases like rice blast, leading to a 30 per cent annual loss in crops in Huong’s commune. These devastating impacts on crop yields are magnified by the intensifying frequency and severity of climate crisis-driven floods and drought, while saltwater intrusion threatens large swathes of this usually fertile delta. What was once a relatively predictable agricultural landscape has become increasingly volatile, forcing farmers to confront multiple risks at once.

For Huong and other farmers in her province, traditional coping strategies, like reliance on chemical pesticides, have only compounded the situation. Intensive use of hazardous chemicals threatens the health of farmers, consumers and the environment, with contaminated soil and water harming biodiversity and beneficial insects. Furthermore, dense seeding to offset crop losses is financially costly and resource wasteful, locking smallholders into cycles of rising input costs and diminishing returns.

Vietnam’s experience reflects a broader regional reality. Across Asia and the Pacific, agriculture-dependent communities remain acutely vulnerable to climate change. While monoculture cropping systems like rice paddies support 60 per cent of regional caloric intake, they are under threat from pests, floods and heatwaves that erode smallholder annual incomes by 20–40 per cent in hotspots, such as the Mekong Delta and Ganges Basin. These pressures are not isolated events but part of a wider structural challenge facing food systems under climate stress.

This makes ecological resilience and community adaptive capacity imperative to counter escalating climate shocks, with 19 per cent rice yield declines for key producers like Viet Nam in the past decade set to climb to 30 per cent if adaptations are not realised and scaled regionally. The implications extend beyond local livelihoods, touching national food security and regional stability.

“My family and others here realised the traditional ways of doing things were no longer enough, but now we have a new way,” said Huong.

That new way has emerged through an approach that reconnects farmers with ecological processes rather than attempting to overpower them. By blending indigenous agricultural approaches from past generations with innovations from today, a project by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is bringing proven country-specific research out of laboratories and into farmers’ fields to tackle the climate crisis. The model starts with hands-on training, delivered at Farmer Field Schools, on topics like ecological pest management and climate-adaptive cultivation solutions, applying these to demonstration plots for later replication on farms.

In Vietnam, pheromone traps prevented pests from mating, while ducks released into rice fields controlled pests, weeds and provided natural fertiliser from their droppings and aerated soil through movement to eliminate needs for chemical pesticides and fertilisers. The Alternate Wetting and Drying irrigation model maintained stable yields while cutting water use and greenhouse gas emissions. Drones were employed to spray biopesticides and reduce farmers’ labour costs. These biopesticides tackled pests while protecting natural enemies like spiders and pollinators such as bees to ensure biodiversity.

The cumulative impact has been transformative. A 30 per cent jump in net profit per hectare has turned Thanh Quoi commune’s farmers into champions of this new way of farming. New methods implemented by the project have allowed farmers to cut material costs by nearly one-third (29 per cent), particularly seeds (50 per cent) and fertiliser (23 per cent). Biopesticides delivered further financial gains by halving spraying regimes due to healthier crops, reinforcing confidence in ecological approaches once viewed with scepticism.

Similar shifts are underway elsewhere in the region. In Bangladesh, where invasive pests and diseases accounted for 30 per cent annual crop losses, a potent trio of biological control methods was combined to reduce fungal diseases and insect damage across okra crops by 60–70 per cent at project sites in Mymensingh district, 120 kilometres north of the capital Dhaka. This holistic solution combines Trichoderma, a fungus that protects plant roots from diseases, with a predatory mite, Neoseiulus longispinosus, that controls pests, while Trichogramma is a wasp that parasitises pest eggs to prevent hatching. With this integrated approach, effective at all stages of pest life cycles, it improves crop health and reduces the need for chemical pesticides, harmful to the environment and friendly organisms.

While in Nepal, tomato growers have witnessed a 60–70 per cent reduction in plant diseases. In partnership with Gandaki province’s Plant Protection Laboratory, the project supported participatory research and development of the fungus Trichoderma viride that antagonises major soil-borne pathogens such as Fusarium, which cause disease, while stimulating the tomato plant’s immune system to also fight off pests such as the fall armyworm. These interventions demonstrate how local research institutions can be embedded within community-led adaptation strategies.

In Cambodia, as part of its mission to bridge critical gaps between research, field implementation and policy reforms, the project created innovative guidelines on the use of pesticides and biopesticides in the country. By aligning farmer practice with regulatory frameworks, the initiative aims to sustain change beyond individual project sites.

By embedding ecological resilience within local communities, farmers now have nature-based knowledge and skills to cultivate agri-food systems for climate-resilient futures. The emphasis is not on abandoning tradition, but on renewing it through science, observation and shared learning.

“These results have completely changed the way I and others farm now and into the future. There is no turning back,” said Huong.

Source: The FAO News And Media Office, Rome

– global bihari bureau