Study Area: Being a developing country, Bangladesh is manifested to a greater threat of climate change than many other countries of the world in spite of its position as a minor contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions. The agro economy of the whole country is at stake, but the coastal region of Bangladesh captures most of the focus. This region has always been full of vast resources and opportunities, as well as been vulnerable to frequent natural hazards due to several climatological and geographical characteristics. The coastal zone possesses a fragile ecosystem and the agriculture experiences the severity of natural disasters every now and then. Global warming induced future climate is likely to affect this region by increasing the frequency and intensity of the natural disasters and thus rendering the coastal community more vulnerable to climate change. These facts have made the people more concerned about taking adaptation strategies to protect their ways of living. The awareness-raising activities and knowledge dissemination by both the government sector and non-governmental entities have also been more concentrated in the coastal zone rather than in other parts of the country. So, the sustainability and performance of the agricultural adaptations in the coastal region are essential to be evaluated. Due to these reasons, the coastal region of Bangladesh has been selected for this study. This study sought to understand and analyze the existing adaptations in practice that were taken to protect the coastal agriculture sector from the negative impacts of climate change. For this study, adaptations in response to climate change were defined as: ‘adjustments that reduce vulnerability to climate variability and change in response to, or in anticipation of, real or perceived stressors. These stressors may be exposure to sudden onset shocks, such as floods, and/or to slow onset stresses, such as changes in temperature and rainfall’.
This study represents a synthesis on the agricultural adaptations in practice in the coastal Bangladesh, which is a part of a larger inventory of adaptation practices prepared under the project: “Deltas, vulnerability and Climate Change: Migration and Adaptation” (DECCMA), funded jointly by the Department for International Development, UK and International Development Research Center, Canada. According to a developed protocol (Tomkins et al. 2014), the evidence of currently observed and documented adaptations in the agriculture sector were collected from different published literatures. These evidences were collected by searching in a number of sources (Google, Google Scholar, etc.) and academic databases (ScienceDirect, Springer, Wiley, OARE, Academiaedu, etc.), national and international agencies and institutions, governmental organizations (GOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), etc. Both Physical-Infrastructural-Technological (PIT) and Socio-economic (SE) adaptations were added in the inventory separately and then the analyses on the adaptation measures were performed jointly. All the collected information were collated in a universal spreadsheet template having 43 different columns, namely, geographical location, provider/beneficiary, forms of adaptations, stresses and shocks, barriers to adaptations, gender relations, sustainability and resilience factors, etc. Information from each adaptation practice in coastal agriculture sector were added in these columns separately and based on these details the evaluation of the adaptation measures was performed.
Analyses of the Adaptation Practices Different agricultural adaptations are observed to be practiced in the coastal region of Bangladesh ranging from hard engineering measures to soft socio-economic measures or technological innovations. About 60 such practices are observed of which 35 are found to be infrastructural-technological and 25 are socio-economic. The major adaptation practices have been innovation in crop technologies such as stress tolerant and short duration crop varieties, agricultural mechanization to ease up post-harvest activities, construction of polders and drainage infrastructures to protect agricultural lands from flooding and waterlogging, introduction of integrated farming practices and changes in cropping pattern. Besides, innovation in vegetable gardening, rainwater harvesting for irrigation, mixed cropping techniques like dyke cropping and relay cropping are among the emerging adaptation practices. Some research activities, training and knowledge dissemination and policy formulation have also been documented as agricultural adaptations.