Climate resilient agriculture is needed for sustainable development in the country, according to the International Chamber of Commerce-Bangladesh.
According to the editorial of the News Bulletin (July-September 2023 issue) of the ICCB released on Sunday, climate change reduces agricultural productivity and leads to greater instability in crop production, disrupting the global food supply and resulting in food and nutritional insecurity.
Climate change increases the risk for the most vulnerable countries and people by affecting livelihoods and income in rural areas— marine, coastal terrestrial and inland ecosystems.
The negative impacts of climate change are already being felt, in the form of increasing temperatures, weather variability, shifting agro-ecosystem boundaries, invasive crops and pests, and more frequent extreme weather events.
Climate change is reducing crop yields, the nutritional quality of major cereals, and lowering livestock productivity.
The most significant adaptation investment is needed in agriculture.
Agriculture is highly sensitive to temperature changes and extreme weather events, so even a limited temperature rise (1.5°C) will have a big impact.
The food security challenge will only become more difficult, as the world will need to produce about 70% more food by 2050 to feed an estimated 9 billion people.
Rising temperatures, flooding rivers, melting glaciers, and other extreme weather events will greatly challenge regional food security, the ICCB said.
Food system sustainability can be addressed by adopting sustainable agricultural systems, shifting the focus to sustainable diets, and finding ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at different levels of the food production supply chain, it said.
However, Bangladesh is responsible for only 0.4% of global greenhouse gas emissions, which is insignificant compared to other mega industrial economies, but Bangladesh is high on the list of countries most vulnerable to climate change.
High population density, poverty and reliance on climate-sensitive sectors for water and food security, particularly water resources, agriculture, fisheries and livestock, increase its vulnerability to climate change.