World Bank approves $120m for Bangladesh’s irrigation based agriculture

[Black_cats]

World Bank approves $120m for Bangladesh’s irrigation based agriculture

ECONOMY
TBS Report
10 March, 2021, 12:25 pm
Last modified: 10 March, 2021, 12:31 pm


The project will help increase the incomes of 170,000 poor people who are vulnerable to climate change

Photo of World Bank. Photo: Collected

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Photo of World Bank. Photo: Collected

The World Bank approved $120 million to help Bangladesh improve food security by enhancing climate resilience and productivity of irrigated agriculture and fisheries.

In a press release published on Tuesday (9 March), the World Bank said, "The Climate-Smart Agriculture and Water Management Project will rehabilitate and modernize public Flood Control, Drainage, and Irrigation (FCDI) infrastructures. This will help improve irrigation and drainage service over 115,000 hectares where flood damage to crops will be reduced by 60 percent."
The project will help increase the incomes of 170,000 poor people who are vulnerable to climate change. Half of the beneficiaries will be women, it added.

Mercy Tembon, country director of World Bank for Bangladesh and Bhutan, said more than 70% of the population of Bangladesh who are dependent on agriculture for their livelihood are vulnerable to climate and natural disasters.

"Climate-resilient water management provided in this project combined with increased agricultural productivity will ensure income growth, protect livelihoods and build resilience of the local communities to climate change," she said.

According to the World Bank press release, the project has identified 19 FCI schemes in poor and climate change vulnerable areas for rehabilitation. It will also provide training to farmers on climate-smart technologies, experimentation with new crops, and post-harvest management.

The project will also support the promotion of coastal aquaculture, including the integration of rice and fish/shrimp farming; setting up of cold storage facilities; and, improvements of local markets. This will improve the productivity of fisheries by almost 40 percent and rice by 7.5 percent, it reads.

"Flood control and drainage systems play a critical role to ensure agricultural productivity and growth. Repairing and upgrading of the selected schemes will improve their capacity to regulate the excess water during the monsoon and water deficits in the post-monsoon period," said Abel Lufafa, senior agriculture specialist of the World Bank and task team leader for the project.

The credit is from the World Bank's International Development Association (IDA), and has a 35-year term, including a five-year grace period.
Bangladesh currently has the largest ongoing IDA program totaling over $13.5 billion. The World Bank was among the first development partners to support Bangladesh and has committed more than $33.5billion in grants, interest-free and concessional credits to the country since its Independence.

World Bank approves $120m for Bangladesh’s irrigation based agriculture

The project will help increase the incomes of 170,000 poor people who are vulnerable to climate change

tbsnews.net

 

[mb444]

70% of Bangladeshies are not dependent on agriculture, less than 40% of BDs work in agriculture contributing about 13% of GDP. The amount of people in agriculture is rapidly declining due to rapid industrialisation, growth of service sector and manpower export.

 

[PakistaniAtBahrain]

70% of Bangladeshies are not dependent on agriculture, less than 40% of BDs work in agriculture contributing about 13% of GDP. The amount of people in agriculture is rapidly declining due to rapid industrialisation, growth of service sector and manpower export.

i am more worried about what climate change and rising sea levels is going to do to a country like Bangladesh that is so vulnerable to flooding in any given year.

 

[mb444]

climate change is real and i do not discount its adverse effect.

But on the ground i have seen new land rising rather than BD loosing land.

BD agriculture is moving rapidly from agrarian to industrial level of production as the farmers adopt to new technologies and more profitable crops.


BD loosing arable lands but production continues its upward trend.

Population management is key. We may not have too much land, but what we have is the most fertile in the world.

 

[Shorisrip]

The truth is that climate change is absolutely real, and humans have caused climates to shift much faster than they typically do. Having said that, Bangladesh isn't going underwater anytime soon, not even 1/10th of the country, let alone alarmist levels like 75%. The Bengal delta has always been a shifting land defined by rivers, and silt brought by the rivers from the Himalayas upstream. Newer technologies have also enabled better ways to deal with rising sea levels, not to mention accelerate the process of creating islands, a phenomenon that is extremely common and fast in the Bay of the Bengal even without human intervention. By 2050, a solidified Mars colonization policy would also have developed, and the complete terraforming of the planet will likely take 100-200 years. We're about to be interplanetary species within our lifetime. Meanwhile all we can do is adopt environmentally-progressive policies and technologies to fuel our growth on earth, but being irrationally alarmist is regressive and a fool's game.

TLDR: I ain't hear no bell, BD's not sinking.