Author(s): Pankaj Kumar; Md Nasif Ahsan; Yasuo Takahashi; Koji Miwa
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Keywords: No Keywords
Abstract: In the face of triple environmental crisis (climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution) plus land degradation, the urgency for collective action considering nexus between its possible implications to forge a sustainable future has never been greater (Kumar, 2019). This is even more urgent in case more vulnerable regions like coastal area, small island countries, for example Bangladesh (Khatun et al., 2022). This study strives to evaluate the importance of climate smart agriculture to address the nexus between water-food-health-human well-being in South Coastal Region of Bangladesh. Questionnaire survey (n=341) based endogenous switching regression (ESR) model is used to examines the determinants and impacts of adopting climate smart agricultural practices based on floating farming, considering the behaviors of adopters and non-adopters (Di et al., 2011). Study findings suggest that approximately 79% of the sampled farm households adopted floating farming as an adaptation strategy in the presence of climatic extreme events, namely, waterlogging, hazard effects, and erratic rainfall. Moreover religion, hazard effect, training, and previous knowledge of floating farming were the determinants of adopting floating farming. Considering the profit of the farm households, the result implies that the farm profit of adopters increases by 42% compared to non-adopters, where different farm supports such as cooperative membership, technical, credit, and training positively affected farms’ profit. Estimates from ESR model exert that adoption of floating farming resulted in better wellbeing when compared with counterfactual situation. Analysis reveals that adopters of floating farming experienced a significant gain of US15.30/decimalasfarmprofitcomparedtocontrolmean (US 36.38/decimal), whereas non-adopters would have gained US$ 6.81/decimal if they have adopted floating farming, indicating the missed opportunity for enhanced profitability. Research findings has high policy relevance to enhance farmers’ profitability and resilience to climatic shock in the wetlands of southwestern Bangladesh.
Year: 2024