On 12 July 2012, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Plus Three intergovernmental agreement establishing the ASEAN Plus Three Emergency Rice Reserve (APTERR) entered into force. In this paper, lead author Roehlano Briones, a senior research fellow at the Philippine Institute for Development Studies, assesses the effectiveness of APTERR as a mechanism for addressing food security in light of the rising challenges of climate change and price volatility. Using Riceflow, a model of the global rice economy, he studies the possible impacts of APTERR releases on the rice market by simulating calamity scenarios for the largest rice producer in the world (the People’s Republic of China) and in the ASEAN region (Indonesia). He posits that APTERR would need to increase its regional reserves to offset the impacts of severe natural disasters. He takes up as well other market-based options that can complement APTERR as a calamity response mechanism.
Climate Change and Price Volatility: Can We Count on the ASEAN Plus Three Emergency Rice Reserve? is one of four working papers presented at the ASEAN Rice Trade Forum in Cambodia in June 2012. The Forum, organized by the ASEAN Food Security Reserve Board, the ASEAN Secretariat and ADB, brought together various stakeholders to share and analyze market information as well as to coordinate policy responses to help avoid the repeat of the rice price crisis of 2007–2008. The crisis, triggered partly by the export restrictions of key rice exporting countries and the panic-buying of major rice importers, plunged close to a billion people worldwide into greater hunger and poverty.