AGREE Project

The ASEAN Green Recovery Through Equity and Empowerment (AGREE) Project is a research project funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and implemented by Grow Asia through its country chapters in the Philippines, Cambodia, and Vietnam. It aims to contribute a catalogue of what's working, what’s needed, and how to scale women's economic empowerment via low-carbon strategies—a gap identified by Grow Asia on effectively mainstreaming gender across its network.

The Philippines has a total land area of 30 million hectares with 14.1 million hectares or 47 percent of the country considered as agricultural land used for production of rice and corn – the two major crops of the country. Agriculture is one of the main drivers of the Philippine economy contributing 8.5 percent to the Philippine GDP and employing more than one third or approximately 24.5 percent of the population (PSA, 2022).

It is against this background that the AGREE Project is being implemented in the Philippines. This research project has two main objectives - to understand opportunities and barriers, and generate recommendations for private and public sector actors to ensure that their efforts to transition to a low-carbon economy in ASEAN’s agriculture sector are gender-inclusive and promote livelihoods and green job opportunities for women.