Food Security in the Face of Climate Change, Population Growth, and Resource Constraints: Implications for Bangladesh

Abstract

Ensuring food security has been one of the major national priorities of Bangladesh since its independence in 1971. Now, this national priority is facing new challenges from the possible impacts of climate change in addition to the already existing threats from rapid population growth, declining availability of cultivable land, and inadequate access to water in the dry season. In this backdrop, this paper has examined the nature and magnitude of these threats for the benchmark years of 2030 and 2050. It has been shown that the overall impact of climate change on the production of food grains in Bangladesh would probably be small in 2030. This is due to the strong positive impact of CO2 fertilization that would compensate for the negative impacts of higher temperature and sea level rise. In 2050, the negative impacts of climate change might become noticeable: production of rice and wheat might drop by 8% and 32%, respectively. However, rice would be less affected by climate change compared to wheat, which is more sensitive to a change in temperature. Based on the population projections and analysis of future agronomic innovations, this study further shows that the availability of cultivable land alone would not be a constraint for achieving food self-sufficiency, provided that the productivity of rice and wheat grows at a rate of 10% or more per decade. However, the situation would be more critical in terms of water availability. If the dry season water availability does not decline from the 1990 level of about 100 Bm3, there would be just enough water in 2030 for meeting both the agricultural and nonagricultural needs. In 2050, the demand for irrigation water to maintain food self-sufficiency would be about 40% to 50% of the dry season water availability. Meeting such a high agricultural water demand might cause significant negative impacts on the domestic and commercial water supply, fisheries, ecosystems, navigation, and salinity management.

A Comparative Analysis on Food Security in Bangladesh, India and Myanmar

“…Bangladesh had a large population of 160 million in 2015 [6], but very limited available land (less than 0.1 ha per capita). Due to poor irrigation and drainage systems [8], the agriculture was frequently affected by droughts and floods [47]. Similarly, India has also faced the pressure of a large population, but it has relatively rich arable land resources, and a higher ability to improve the agricultural technology and thus crop productivity.…”

“…After the 2008 global food price crisis, food security moved higher on the policy agenda in a number of countries [2], including Bangladesh [3], India [4], and Myanmar [5]. As these three countries all have a big population, together comprising 21% of the global population [6] and consuming 32% of the global rice and 39% of the global pulse [7], ensuring food security has been one of the major national priorities since their independence [8][9][10]. In 2013, China proposed the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor initiatives to enhance economic cooperation.…”

The Sustainability of Rice-Based Cropping Systems in Coastal Bangladesh: Bio-Economic Analysis of Current and Future Climate Scenarios

“…Total food grain production (rice and wheat) in the financial year 2013-14 was 35.69 million tonnes, which is about three times higher than that for 1975-76, when 12.56 million tons of rice was produced (SFYP 2011;BBS 2014aBBS , 2014b Despite a steady growth in food production, the country is still facing persistent challenges to its food security and every year needs to import an average of 3.45 million tonnes food grain. This comprises, on average, 3.36 million tons of wheat and 0.09 million tonnes of rice (Faisal and Parveen 2004;SFYP 2011). Moreover, the population of the country is projected to increase by about 20 million by 2025 and a further 23 million by 2050 from the current 159 million (WB 2016a).…”

“…However, earlier planting date, adopting short-duration varieties for wet-season rice, and crop diversification could be suitable adaptation options. Faisal and Parveen (2004), using the CERES-Rice and CERES-Wheat models, projected that the net climate change impacts on food grain production in Bangladesh by 2030 would not be great. They attributed this to the effect of rising temperature being offset by the rise in atmospheric CO2.…”

“…They are also poorly served by physical infrastructure such as roads, embankments, and irrigation that might enhance their adaptive capacity. Yet this already-stressed sector is under considerable pressure to help meet the increasing food demand of a growing population Faisal and Parveen 2004;Baas and Ramasamy 2008;Hussain 2011). In addition, policymakers face a great challenge to safeguard the livelihoods of these coastal dwellers MoEF 2009).…”