Lesly Goh

A Technologist Advances Solutions to One of Methane’s Top Emitters

Lesly Goh is on a mission to leverage technology for sustainable rice production. During her tenure at the World Bank Group, she has helped governments in low- and middle-income countries embrace technological innovation to improve their agricultural sustainability and access to digital markets for smallholder farmers. “The challenges on the ground are very real, but there are also potential solutions,” she said. “We need people who are willing to partner for the long haul.” 

Rice production is one of the biggest contributors to agricultural methane emissions, second only to livestock. Lesly’s work has taken her to communities across Africa and Asia, where she has encountered the pervasive issue of greenhouse gas emissions from the rice industry. Lesly remembers zeroing in on these agricultural emitters as an “awakening” experience, when she and her team felt an “urgency to put more emphasis and resources to address this challenge.” 

To find solutions, Lesly moved to Asia, where 90 percent of the world’s rice is produced. The crop is a lifeline for around 150 million smallholder farmers, many of whom live in poverty and cultivate rice on less than 1 hectare of land. Lesly focuses on what she affectionately calls her “V.I.P. countries: Vietnam, Indonesia and Philippines,” which produced a combined 117.2 million metric tons of rice in 2022. 

Methane emissions from rice cultivation are a result of traditional practices passed down through generations of rice farms that relied on flooding the land and excessive use of inputs such as chemical fertilizers and pesticides. These practices lead to methane emission from bacteria that feeds on the decomposing plant material in the flooded rice paddy fields. “It was not until I moved to Asia and I met smallholder farmers face-to-face that I really gained a true appreciation of how hard it is, what the realities are like on the ground, the challenges they face, and the enormous climate risk they experience every single season,” Lesly shared. 

People-First Breakthroughs for Greener Farming 

Beginning in 2015, the World Bank and the Vietnam government initiated a program to equip farmers with knowledge and resources to adopt sustainable farming practices. The ​​Vietnam Sustainable Agriculture Transformation Project (VnSAT) concluded in 2022 and successfully aided thousands of rice farmers in the Mekong Delta to adopt sustainable practices. 

The program resulted in a 1.5 million ton reduction of carbon emissions, a 50 percent decrease in input use, and a 30 percent average increase in farmers’ earnings. Through the 185,000-hectare pilot, the government realized that they could create a better approach and scale it to reach farmers working across 1 million hectares in the 12 provinces of Mekong Delta. The solution puts farmers in the driver’s seat, digitally connecting them to real time information for sustainable methods and building a support system to facilitate adoption. 

Lesly asserts that the key to scaling this approach is enabling the trusted network of extension workers to support the smallholder farmers so that they could adopt sustainable farming practices, leveraging technology innovation such as precision agriculture to measure water and soil carbon. It is critical to design the technology solutions with human interface in order to increase the adoption of modern farming methods, especially for the older farmers with low literacy in the rural communities. When she joined the Bellagio Center’s residency program in 2023, she was working on a digital innovation hub for low-carbon rice. “Our focus is on helping the smallholder farmer build resilience and improve their livelihood,” she shared, noting future hopes for a carbon market that would reward farmers for sustainable practices. 

Expanding the Vision with the Bellagio Network 

The idea evolved during Lesly’s residency, where she says her cohort’s contributions drove her to “think bigger.” She remembers one convening with Paul Muthaura, founder of the African Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI), when they discussed how to be strategic and organized in this work. “It’s helpful for me to understand how another region was able to create that cohesion with the carbon market and organize it to scale… It got me to think about not just one country at a time but the whole region and how to harmonize the approach to address common challenges.” Lesly and Paul connected regularly during the residency to exchange knowledge and continue to inspire one another across Africa and Southeast Asia. 

Lesly also highly values the connection she made with co-resident Laurence Lien, the co-founder of the Asia Philanthropy Circle. She shared, “He heard me talk about the decarbonization of agriculture just about every day. We had long conversations about how philanthropists can play a catalytic role to mobilize resources to support the developing countries where there is funding gaps for soft investments such as digital innovation for climate smart agriculture.” Lately, she’s been talking to the philanthropic network about a generative AI tool that provides farmers with advice on sustainable practices. 

The next phase of this work is to secure financing, technical assistance, and government support. “In the next few years when we finish this project, I hope that we will then be able to truly fulfill what we set out to do, which is to help the farmers increase their income through more sustainable agriculture methods and incentivize farmers’ behavior change through new financial solutions using carbon credits,” she shared. 

Lesly invites the Bellagio Network to join the movement for tech-empowered sustainable agrifood system transformation. “The Bellagio Resident network is an invaluable community to share insights and discover like-minded partners who could join force to address the challenges in the Global South.”