Bridging science and society : Tailor-made hydroclimatic information service with farmers in Lower Bengal Delta, Bangladesh

Abstract

The farming communities living in the Lower Bengal Delta, Bangladesh are vulnerable to hydroclimatic variability. Farming decisions are becoming risky due to unpredictable weather patterns. The southwest region of Bangladesh, located in the heart of the Lower Bengal Delta, is known as an ecologically rich and productive agriculture zone. At the same time, smallholder farming communities are confronted with recurrent hydroclimatic events such as cyclones, storm surges, tidal flooding, and salinity intrusion among others. These events severely affect the agricultural income, livelihood, and food security of farming communities. Improved management of these hydroclimate risks is necessary to improve the livelihood and food security of the smallholders. Hydroclimate information services and technology hold the potential to help smallholders to manage hydroclimatic risks through informed agricultural decision-making. However, there is a scientific challenge for developing services and bridges between the available model-based forecasts and the local context and capabilities. The central question is how hydroclimatic information services can be tailored in ways that local farmers find useful in decision-making processes for their crops and livelihood activities. Another transdisciplinary challenge is balancing information service providers and end-users, integrating social science and climate science perspectives. Understanding end-user needs and capacity, local knowledge institutions, and policy are also fundamental challenges for the co-production of services for sectoral end-users and improving the value of forecasts information. There is a need for timely, accurate, and effective hydroclimatic information services mechanisms. The existing information services are largely developed from a top-down perspective. A bottom-up approach, shaped by users' requirements, engagement and capacity building has not been attempted yet. In this dissertation, I aim to co-produce hydroclimatic information services with smallholder farmers in the lower Bengal Delta in Khulna, Bangladesh. A mixed-methods transdisciplinary research approach was applied to study current knowledge gaps that exist regarding (i) farmers' practices and the role of available information, (ii) hydroclimatic information needs of smallholders, (iii) co-production of information services with and for smallholder farmers, and (iv) willingness to pay for location-and time-specific climate information services for wider uptake, improved agricultural practices, and service sustainability. This study confirms that there is a potential for need-based tailored information services for smallholders. However, farmers' information needs assessment is not a single-step process. This requires iterative interaction and capacity building. The coproduction study shows that hydroclimate information services through actors' collaboration, capacity building of farmers, and extension officers at farmer field school lead to better understanding, accessibility, and uptake of weather...

Understanding flood forecast information provision for agriculture in Bangladesh

“…Many challenges to effective forecast information service provision have been reported through different studies, and typically they focus on several key problems or issues. A number of studies focus on the forecast information itself, and they typically point to the need to improve the timeliness, accuracy, and reliability and accessibility of information (Islam et al, 2013;DAE, 2018Fakhruddin et al, 2015;Kumar, 2021). This is accompanied by the considerable interest in enhancing scientific forecast models related to climate, weather and floods (Hammer, 2001;Hansen, 2004;Esquivel et al, 2018), and developing novel ICT technologies as a vehicle to enhance access to such information (Kumar et al, 2020;Muzreba, and Rahman, 2014;Hasan, 2015).…”

“…These studies point to the limitations in farmers' capacities to interpret and understand forecast information and use it effectively in their farming practices (Archie et al, 2014;DAE, 2018). At the same time, several authors have signaled that forecast information tends to be provided in a supply-driven fashion, and is currently not very responsive to specific demands of farmers (Kumar, 2021). In response to this, several researchers have experimented with co-production approaches whereby farmers participate in the design of (mostly ICTbased) information services, demonstrating that this is a promising route to creating more relevant information services (Kumar et al, 2020;Sarku et al, 2021;Nyadzi, 2020).…”

“…Bangladesh is an agricultural country, and the livelihoods of poor rural households largely rely on agriculture, which is severely affected by floods and unpredictable weather and climatic events (World Bank, 2016;Parveen, 2009;Islam and Hasan, 2016;Huq et al, 2015;Khanom, 2016;Kumar, 2021).…”

“…Both the national and international communities recognise that developing weather and climate services is essential to minimize the effect of climate variability and change (Vaughan and Dessai, 2014;Ouédraogo et al, 2018;Bruno et al, 2018;Vedeld et al, 2019;Nyadzi, 2020;Islam et al, 2013) and to support the planning and management of agricultural activities, for example through better anticipation of flooding (Gbangou et al, 2020;Paparrizos et al, 2020;Naab et al, 2019;Nyadzi et al, 2018;Rahman et al, 2020;Kundu et al, 2020;Kumar, 2021).…”

“…The term weather and climate information services refers to a broad spectrum of forecast information services in terms of the production, translation, dissemination, and usage of the weather, climate, and flood related information to support societal decision-making (Vedeld et al, 2019;Kruk et al, 2017;Amwata et al, 2018;Vaughan and Dessai, 2014;Kumar, 2021). Since 1972 stepwise progress has been made in Bangladesh in flood forecasting and warning services, with new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) playing an important role (Paudyal, 2002;Islam et al, 2013;Naab et al, 2019;Partey et al, 2020).…”