Rice is one of the worlds most important crops, and it has a long history of supporting dense populations and civilizations throughout East, South and Southeast Asia. This project will reveal the history of rice cultivation comparatively across the region using cutting age archaeological science. One major aim is to reconstruct how rice was grown across the region at different times. Rice may be grown in wet cultivation systems (irrigated or flooded) and dry cultivation (based only on rainfall, often in upland areas), and in intermediate lowland, rainfed conditions. These different systems have important implications in terms of how productive rice is, and therefore how much human population it can support, as well as how labour-intensive it was. Dry systems yielded less but also cost less in terms of labour. How rice was grown has important implications for the impact that humans and rice had on environmental change. Intensive systems tend to require greater landscape modification and by supporting higher populations have knock-on effects on other resources, for example through deforestation. Another very important impact is the production of methane, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. Dry rice cultivation systems produce little methane whereas the more productive wet systems produce a lot. It has been hypothesized by some climate scientists that methane from rice contributed to an anomalous rise in methane over the past 5000 years which is not explained by natural sources. If so, then this has contributed to global warming even before the industrial era and will need to be factored into models that hope to predict where global climate change is going. One of the aims of this project is to ground truth this hypothesis by modelling up from the empirical archaeological evidence for rice cultivation over time to assess whether this fits with explaining at least part of the methane anomaly. In order to do this we need better evidence not just for where and when rice was cultivated but also whether it was grown in wet or dry systems. Through systematic study of archaeologically preserved seeds, we can identify the weed flora associated with past rice and whether it fits with a wet or dry system. In addition we have developed methods for classifying the assemblages of phytoliths (microscopic silica from the decomposition of plants) from archaeological sites as indicating wetter or drier rice cultivation regimes. We are now hoping to apply these methods over a larger number of sites and regions, especially regions for which archaeobotanical evidence for early rice is limited or lacking, including parts of India (western and northeastern), Bangladesh, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, and southern China (Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangdong). By combining these new results in a GIS modelling system, together with data from other parts of the region, mostly collected by us and colleagues over the past few years, we will be better able to produce realistic spatial models of the spread of rice, the extent of wet rice, and likely methane emissions over time. We will also be able to improve our understanding of how the development of rice agriculture relates to the long-term history of human societies in this region.

In South Asia in general and India in particular, more than one fourth of the population depends for their livelihood upon the services from different ecosystems but are below the poverty line and are characterised as having a low level of well-being. Conventional decisions of public policy are taken without acknowledging the people-ecosystem linkages. This creates situations where the condition and the ability of ecosystems to deliver those services are affected adversely. Some of the drivers of change, like climatic variations and loss of biodiversity, are linked with drivers like demographic dynamics and rapidly expanding trade and investment in the region. The scientific evidence base is sufficiently broad and strong to suggest that ecosystem service delivery in the region is changing and this change is impacting the societal well-being and material dimension of the poor in the region, but the capacity to internalise the concerns of changing ecosystems and its implications for poverty alleviation in dominant public policy is limited. Growing societal pressures and the availability of credible scientific evidence like Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) and Inter Government Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have made decision-makers receptive to the role ecosystem services in improving the material condition of the poor. Some of the recent initiatives by the Government of India on watershed management, national action plan on climate change and desertification, assessment of wasteland, new forest policies, task force on Tiger and biosphere reserve programme clearly demonstrate this level of this receptivity. However, the mechanisms through which the aspects of ecosystem can be made integral part of mainstream planning and policies need a more concerted and focussed approach. The capacity of the decision makers to analyse the way choices made by society might impact the functioning of ecosystem is not adequate. One of the significant gaps in the capacity identified during Situation Analysis conducted for South Asia under ESPA is the ability to capture the benefits people derive from ecosystems. Since the prevailing market does not account the benefits, the decision making tool chooses to ignore the benefits of ecosystem services and the costs of ecosystem degradation. People depend on those services but the level of dependence is proportionately more for the poor than the rich. In this context, the proposed research will focus on two components: 1. Methodological development to support policy design; and 2. Building capacity and demand. Component 1 will synthesise available information on state-of-the-art methods to support the decision-making process, facilitating the development of these methods within the region and the development of 'toolkits', such as a toolkit for the valuation of regulating services, and decision support systems. Component 2 will build capacity within the region through engaging key stakeholders and decision makers at province level to disseminate the findings of component 1, fostering regional demand for future work within this area, developing regional capacity and awareness amongst the regional research community and developing networks for future collaborations. The project strives to build upon the past and on-going work with the feedback from the stakeholders and key decision-makers in a trans-disciplinary and reiterative framework.