Reoriented agriculture to help fight climate change
Bangladesh should adopt climate-smart agriculture to help the country overcome the increasing risk of food insecurity that may result from climate change, experts said yesterday.
The climate-smart agriculture is an approach that provides guidance on the actions that are needed to transform and reorient agricultural systems to ensure food security in a changing climate.
“This is now the best solution for Bangladesh, which has gone through several extreme natural disasters in the recent past,” said Md Saidur Rahman, a researcher at the Research Initiatives, Bangladesh (RIB).
Rahman was delivering a keynote speech at a dialogue on “Climate change and agriculture in Bangladesh” organised by the RIB at the Cirdap auditorium in Dhaka.
Established with financial support from the Dutch government, the RIB conducts research on identifying strategies to ensure sustainable poverty alleviation in Bangladesh.
The negative impact of climate change is a reality that no one can ignore, Rahman said.
“So we have to address the changing conditions sincerely and develop our agricultural methods to produce food accordingly.”
The agriculture sector's shift from nature sensitivity to commercialisation and consumerism has caused monoculture, water and soil degradation, degradation of food quality and loss of biodiversity, he said.
The country's government, non-governmental and other organisations have taken numerous reform programmes for the sake of the agriculture sector, he said.
“As a country of over 16 crore people, we must focus on productivity. The focus should not be on introducing imported policies which will ultimately lead to an ecological imbalance.”
Rahman stressed the need for conducting more research and studies to counter the impact of climate change on the local agriculture sector. Shamsul Bari, chairman of the RIB, and Md Hamidur Rahman, former director general of the Department of Agricultural Extension, also spoke.
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