Bangladesh is a deltaic plain developed under three big river systems of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna. The delta borders with the Bay of Bengal in the south. The fast growing population of the country is badly exposed to flood, drought, storms and sea-level rise. Among the 16 countries listed by Maplecroft, a British-based global risk advisory firm as being at “extreme” risk from climate change over the next 30 years, five are from South Asia with Bangladesh on the top of the list.
Bangladesh is flood-prone with high risk of drought and famine. The problem is compounded by a high degree of poverty and agriculture dependency of much of its populace. The serious impacts climate change are found in a group of developing countries like Bangladesh with socio-economic systems not well-equipped to address development challenges, such as food and water security.
The country has a large growing population, majority of whom are poor and depend on agriculture and natural resource bases for their employment, income generation and livelihood.
The people in general and the government in particular have very limited capacity to address the increasing impacts of the global climate change and vulnerability of the people to its associated risks. Although natural disasters due to climate change affect the overall development activities of the country, their effects are more pronounced in the crop sector.
Bangladesh is predominantly a rice growing country with rice-based cropping systems. Crop production in Bangladesh is largely determined by temperature, monsoon rainfall, humidity and normal flooding. But the change in rapid seasonal patterns and weather, rainfall and hydro-logical patterns, drought, and salinity intrusion affect soil fertility and productivity of crops. All these pose serious threat to food security and nutritional status of common people in Bangladesh. The farming community, however, needs current information, knowledge and technologies as well as resources to combat the adversaries of climate change and improve their adaptive capacity.
More than 60 percent of the populace of the country is engaged in farming and they are mostly poor. These poor people have to bear the burnt of the natural calamities. Traditional farming practices are being seriously affected due to erratic
pattern of climate change resulting in crop failure. The experience has quite upset the traditional pattern of agricultural farming which depends to a large measure on the knowledge of the farmers abut the seasonal cycles. But the recent changes in that seasonal pattern due to climate change places the farmers in a difficult situation. Under the circumstance, coping and adaptation strategies have provisions to reduce the risk the poor are exposed to and build their resilience in the face of climate change disasters. Farmers have to adopt the new farming technologies some of which are already developed to cope with the changed situation in crop production.
Agro-technology intervention will be an important step in combating climate change impacts in crop sector. A number of new crop cultivars have been developed by Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) and Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) to cope with the emerging situation. The southern coastal belt of the country, which comprises 30 percent of the total arable land, is affected by varying degrees of salinity. Normally only one major crop, Aman rice, is grown there with low yield (1.5 t/ha). A number of saline tolerant rice cultivars have been developed by BRRI (BRRI dhan-40, BRRI dhan-41, BRRI dhan-47, BRRI dhan-53, BRRI dhan-54), and also BINA (BINA-8, BINA-9) with high yield potential (4-6 t/ha). Many of these crop cultivars can be grown both in Boro and Aman seasons.
BRRI has developed flood tolerant rice cultivars as well. The rice cultivars BRRI dhan 51 and BRRI dhan 52 can survive flood water submergence up to two weeks. Monga areas and other places, where flash floods destroy rice crop such as in haor areas, it could be salvaged by
growing shorter duration rice varieties developed by both BINA (BINA-7), BRRI (BRRI dhan-33, BRRI dhan 39). The paddies can be harvested in only 100 days after sowing seeds or 115 to 118 days after transplanting of seedlings.
Sea water can reach far inland during natural disasters, like flood, cyclone, tidal wave etc., making it hard to cultivate staple food like rice. In September 2007, cyclonic-storm Sidr and in May 2009, cyclone Aila caused far-reaching damage with wide spread flooding, which left thousands homeless and killed many. Vast tract of land in the south-west was also inundated. Salt water intrusion would naturally disrupt rice production. The number of affected people rose
to millions.
Environmentalists predict that climate change will affect more than 375 million people every year globally by 2015 with natural disasters and rising sea levels. There is an immediate need to address the climate change effects on cropping pattern and introduce new crop cultivars in the existing cropping systems to improve crop production and livelihood of the farmers in disaster prone areas of the country and thereby alleviating the poverty level of the farming community.
The writer, a former Professor at Bangladesh Agricultural University, is a Senior Agriculture Specialist, Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS), Dhaka.
E-mail: sahaque2010@yahoo.com