Sustainable Land Management – Terrascope Mission 2021

Introduction

Bangladesh suffers from significant soil degradation as a result of poor agricultural practices. 43% of the country is desertified because of severe slope erosion and intensive rice cultivation that depletes soil nutrients. River diversions constructed for increased drought resilience also reduce streamflow, forcing farming to rely on groundwater contaminated by naturally occurring arsenic.^[1] Population growth exacerbates these consequences of unsustainable development, necessitating the use of modern agricultural technologies. As indicated by research conducted in rural farming villages, such conventional techniques allow farmers to achieve self sufficiency but significantly reduce soil quality.^[2] These adverse effects suggest that current agricultural practices are inadequate to ensure Bangladesh’s long-term food security, leaving the region vulnerable to climate driven land degradation. To prepare Bangladesh’s coastal communities for climate change, strategies guided by modern soil science must be implemented to prevent the misuse of limited land resources. Social and economic conditions that necessitate current unsustainable practices must also be considered to develop the political infrastructure required for effective land use policy. These proposals will alleviate Bangladesh’s existing land use challenges and reduce the region’s vulnerability to future climate change threats.

Scientific and Technological Solutions

For sustainable land use, Bangladesh must first consider agricultural practices that enhance existing soil properties. Organic matter and nutrient losses may be offset through agroforestry techniques that increase natural nutrient inputs. Nitrogen fixation by leguminous tree species, leaf litter deposition, and root system development all improve soil fertility and promote microbial growth.^[1] These microbes decompose litter into humus, a substance rich in organic acids that improves nutrient exchange capacity, soil texture and aggregate stability, and water holding capacity.^[3] Such benefits are doubly provided by the physical structure of root systems that reduce erosion and support vast mycorrhizal fungi networks that facilitate nutrient transfers.^[4] Bangladeshi farmers should take advantage of these natural soil processes to restore degraded farmland and meet growing food demands. This strategy is among the least environmentally intrusive means by which Bangladesh can adapt its vulnerable food producing industries to climate change.

While agroforestry improves agricultural productivity with few adverse ecological effects, these gains may prove insufficient to support Bangladesh’s growing population. Thus, when farmers must apply conventional techniques to meet elevated food demands, some changes to accepted best practices may minimize unwanted side-effects. By precisely timing the addition of fertilizer to align with periods of nutrient limitation, farmers can increase the nutrient use efficiency of their crops. This technique ensures that phosphorus and nitrogen added as fertilizer does not accumulate in soil and is instead rapidly assimilated by plants with elevated nutrient demands. As a result, a larger fraction of added nutrients is stored in crop biomass, away from soil microbes that convert nitrogen-containing compounds into nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas. These plant nutrients are also protected from large precipitation events that wash away valuable fertilizer and remove soil nutrients.^[5] Thus, selective fertilization is useful to Bangladeshi farmers who must maximize the productivity of degraded land with limited access to nutrient supplements. When farmers must use modern technologies like fertilizers to meet growing food demands, this technique should be applied to ensure that nutrients are not lost from agroecosystems. If combined with unconventional agroforestry methods, this sustainable modification to modern agricultural practices may allow Bangladesh to adapt to climate driven land degradation.

Political Economy of Land Degradation

The social and economic challenges faced by Bangladeshi farmers also encourage the widespread application of poor agricultural practices. The conversion of rice farmland to shrimping ponds exemplifies the effects of market forces on Bangladeshi land use. Because of their profitability, shrimp farms cover 141,000 hectares of Bangladesh’s southern coast and provide the country’s second largest export.^[6] Although investments in aquaculture offer new economic opportunities to impoverished sustenance farmers, these developments degrade neighboring rice farms by elevating soil salinity and acidity. Small landowners must endure these negative environmental side-effects and compete with shrimp farms owned by foreign investors.^[7] Sea level rise and inland flooding may necessitate the expansion of aquaculture in Bangladesh to offset losses in arable land. However, this solution’s adverse effects on terrestrial agriculture illustrate the tradeoffs and equity issues inherent to some climate change adaptation strategies. Bangladesh requires improved land-use policy to ensure that adaptation plans benefit all affected stakeholders.

Figure 1: The majority of Bangladeshi shrimp farming occurs in the southwestern districts of Khulna, Satkhira, and Bagerhat.
Source: Hassan et al. Monitoring the presence of chloramphenicol and nitrofuran metabolites in cultured prawn, shrimp and feed in the Southwest coastal region of Bangladesh ^[13]

Bangladesh’s existing political infrastructure is insufficient to manage the impacts of climate change adaptation on existing land use. The Bangladesh Forestry Department’s Forest Master Plan illustrates the limitations of existing environmental management institutions. The Forestry Department provided inadequate funding for community forest management proposals and collected insufficient monitoring data to evaluate program effectiveness.^[8] These constraints on financial and human capital led Bangladesh to formalize its land use policies and establish governance bodies with greater funding and enforcement power. New land management institutions have not reduced the vulnerability of small landowners to natural disasters or other climate change risks. In addition, insufficient coordination between Bangladesh’s 11 land management ministries and 24 agencies hinder the local, regional, and national collaboration required for sustainable resource use and development.^[9] To resolve these inefficiencies, Bangladesh expanded its collaborations with NGOs, journalists, and local farmers to solicit recommendations on how government institutions should adapt to climate change.

Acting on this third party advice, some government officials recommended the creation of village courts to decide land ownership disputes. These small judicial bodies would possess a greater understanding of community land ownership than national enforcement agencies. In addition, the accessibility of village courts to community members would ensure all parties receive equitable representation and view court rulings as legitimate. Disputes over charland ownership highlight the importance of these traits to successful land governance.^[10] Chars, or riverine islands and sandbars, support 600,000 farmers in Bangladesh who abide by informal property rights agreements to manage their ephemeral land resources.^[11] Local char ownership adjudication bodies with knowledge of these complex norms may be more effective in managing disputes between sustenance farmers and encroaching investors.^[12] Bangladesh should create these community courts in chars and croplands to equitably distribute land resources threatened by climate change. In cases where conflicts persist, a national land management body consisting of farmers, legal experts, and government representatives could advise local courts on how to assign property rights. This oversight committee should include representatives from numerous community courts, providing farmers with authority over land ownership at all political scales. Such an arrangement will allow Bangladesh to resolve tensions that arise from resource scarcity exacerbated by climate change.

Figure 2: New charlands in southern Bangladesh since 2000. Source: Roy, P. New land raises new hope^[14]

Government officials also suggested improvements to Bangladesh’s land zoning laws. Because of the country’s high population density, land is a scarce resource divided amongst industrialists, sustenance farmers, and residential developers. Bangladesh has not formally allocated land to each of these stakeholders, allowing for the exploitation of farmland in favor of more profitable industrial pursuits.^[10] Clearly defined zoning laws that set aside land for industrial development are needed to avoid the unsupervised destruction of regions suitable for agriculture. Any zoning boundaries defined as part of this approach should prioritize unproductive cropland for conversion to alternative uses that facilitate economic development. Disputes over zoning boundaries that affect individual communities could be resolved in village courts and escalated to a national land management agency if necessary. Court officials would benefit from digitized geospatial zoning data that describes where certain land use regulations apply. Bangladesh should invest in the production of this database and provide it policymakers and the public through existing Internet infrastructure and other communication pathways.^[10] These efforts would provide enforcement agencies the required information to apply zoning laws that protect lands vulnerable to climate change.

Conclusion

Bangladesh faces significant land use challenges that exacerbate its vulnerability to climate change. To support a growing population, Bangladeshi farmers have resorted to conventional agricultural techniques that, when poorly applied, cause significant environmental damage. Farmers must adopt strategies that improve the natural functions of soil ecosystems and minimize the adverse effects of modern technologies to preserve their limited resources. Economic constraints also encourage the widespread application of unsustainable land use practices that maximize profits. These developments, including shrimp farms constructed in southwestern Bangladesh, are less vulnerable to sea level rise and other climate change threats than existing rice farms. However, the adverse effects of such practices on existing land use necessitate improved environmental management policies that account for tradeoffs between climate change adaptation and immediate resource needs. Policymakers and scientists should provide Bangladesh’s farming communities the resources, information, and political representation required for the equitable implementation of land use reforms.

By Jarek Kwiecinski

References

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