On January 15th, 2024, the Workshop on Creating carbon credits in rice cultivation in Nghe An held in Vinh city brought together key stakeholders including representatives from JICA; Japan Green-carbon INC Company; North Central Institute of Agricultural Science and Technology; Vietnam National University of Agriculture; Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Nghe An province and units under the Department.
Carbon credits, a valuable asset in the realm of sustainable agriculture, have not been fully tapped into within the agricultural sector. The Prime Minister has approved the One Million Hectares of Low-Emission High-Quality Rice Project in the Mekong Delta region. In addition, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment is currently promoting the early operation of Vietnam's carbon credit market next year, and may officially join the world carbon credit exchange in the following years.
At the workshop, Mr. Nguyen Tien Duc - Director of the Provincial Department of Crop Production and Plant Protection said that in order to produce rice to meet the requirements of creating carbon credits, it is necessary to meet many criteria and requirements from the preparation stage, the right production time, and farming methods. Therefore, the government and specialized agencies need to coordinate, guide, direct, and plan regions, thereby providing standard production processes to direct implementation, creating pressure for production organizations to meet requirements.
Across the country, pilot experiments to create carbon credits in production have been carried out on a number of crops such as corn, sugarcane, rice... In Nghe An, after a successful pilot on rice, it will expand implementation to a number of other crops with large and potential area such as corn, sugarcane, tea... as well as get carbon credits by reducing emissions in cow farming.
It is expected that in the first season, the project will be implemented on an area of nearly 6,000 hectares of rice in the districts of Nam Dan, Nghi Loc, Hung Nguyen, Do Luong, Dien Chau... located in the irrigation areas of Northern Irrigation and Southern Irrigation. The number of participating households is about 24,000 households.