Impact of Climate Change on Cotton Production in Bangladesh

Md Nadiruzzaman, Mahjabeen Rahman, Uma Pal, Simon Croxton, Md Bazlur Rashid, Aditya Bahadur and Saleemul Huq
Additional contact information
Md Nadiruzzaman: CLISEC Research Group, Institute of Geography, University of Hamburg, 20146 Hamburg, Germany
Mahjabeen Rahman: International Rice Research Institute, Dhaka 1213, Bangladesh
Uma Pal: Acclimatise/Climate and Resilience Hub, Willis Towers Watson, New Delhi 110070, India
Simon Croxton: Acutora, Stanford 7210, South Africa
Md Bazlur Rashid: Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD), Dhaka 1207, Bangladesh
Aditya Bahadur: International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), London WC1V 7LE, UK
Saleemul Huq: International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD), Dhaka 1229, Bangladesh

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 2, 1-17

Abstract: Bangladesh produces only 5% of the cotton she needs to sustain her readymade garments industries. The country has very limited agricultural land and cotton competes with other crops for this scarce land resource. On top of that, Bangladesh is regarded as a country where agriculture is highly vulnerable to the variabilities of weather patterns that result from climate change. Against this backdrop, to better understand the potential for the sustainable expansion of cotton production in Bangladesh, we examine cotton’s agricultural value chain and projected climate risks associated with different phases of the chain. We identified associated stakeholders at different phases of cotton production, engaged with them to understand climatic and non-climatic threats and developed an integrated set of recommendations for climate-risk management through improving the connection of producers to markets, increasing economic returns to small farmers, and improving efficiency along the value chain. We discussed our estimated climate projections with stakeholders to understand the challenges at different stages of production and marketing, and together explored and identified probable solutions. This research offers a new and evolving approach to assess climate change impact on agriculture utilizing a holistic approach, which could be adopted for other crops.

Keywords: climate change; agriculture; value chain approach; multi-criteria analysis; Bangladesh; cotton (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/2/574/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/2/574/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:2:p:574-:d:477450

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().