Bangladesh Climate-Smart Agriculture Investment Plan : Investment Opportunities in the Agriculture Sector’s Transition to a Climate Resilient Growth Path
Bangladesh’s agriculture sector is the country’s main source of food security, employment, and poverty alleviation. More than 70 percent of Bangladesh’s population and 77 percent of its workforce lives in rural areas. Nearly half of all Bangladeshi...
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| Format: | Report |
| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2019
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/936881574884000754/Bangladesh-Climate-Smart-Investment-Plan-Investment-opportunities-in-the-agriculture-sector-s-transition-to-a-climate-resilient-growth-path http://hdl.handle.net/10986/32742 |
| Summary: | Bangladesh’s agriculture sector is the
country’s main source of food security, employment, and
poverty alleviation. More than 70 percent of Bangladesh’s
population and 77 percent of its workforce lives in rural
areas. Nearly half of all Bangladeshi workers and two-thirds
of workers in rural areas are directly employed in
agriculture. About 87 percent of the nation’s rural
households rely on agriculture for at least part of their
income. With one of the fastest rates of productivity growth
in the world (averaging 2.7 percent per year since 1995,
second only to China), Bangladesh’s agriculture sector
accounted for 90 percent of the country’s reduction in
poverty between 2005 and 2010. This growth has also allowed
the country to triple its rice production since it gained
independence in 1971 and to halve its food deficit, and with
it the number of malnourished people, since the mid-1990s.
In 1991, nearly two-thirds of Bangladeshi children were
underweight; today that number is less than one-third.
Bangladesh faces growing demand for food and pressure from
rapid land use change including significant losses of arable
land. Population increases to an estimated 186 million by
2030 and 202 million by 2050, increasing income levels, and
rapid urbanization at a rate of 3.5 percent annually 1 are
expected to shift diets away from rice and wheat toward
animal-based diets. At the same time, while Bangladesh
produces almost all its own rice, current yield trends
indicate production will not be able to satisfy growing
demand for cereals (including rice), which is projected to
increase 21 percent by 2030 and 24 percent by 2050. Given
the increasing population density and continued loss of
arable land caused by urbanization and other factors,
enhancing the productivity of rice and other staple foods
remains crucial. These trends suggest that Bangladesh must
sustainably increase food production on far less arable land
per capita to continue to strive for self-sufficiency in
agricultural production. The World Bank considers
climate-smart agriculture (CSA) a strategic priority
investment in response to climate change in agriculture. The
executive directors of the International Development
Association (IDA) of the World Bank Group have recognized
the need to address several concerning trends in the world’s
poorest countries, including the growing demand for food,
the unsustainable pressure of current agricultural practices
on agricultural landscapes, the increasing threat of climate
change to agricultural productivity, and agriculture’s
significant contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. |
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