1. Introduction
Owing to its geographical location, climate, and topology, Bangladesh is characterized by agro-zones that are highly susceptible to drought, cyclones, flooding, and rising salinity, rendering Bangladesh one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change. Such findings have been extensively supported in the literature [
1,
2], particularly in relation to sea-level rise and intense climatic events. Indeed, climate change poses extensive economic and physical risk to all societies by negatively impacting a number of factors, such as water resources, agriculture, and terrestrial and marine ecosystems, among others. However, in developing nations such as Bangladesh, where agriculture plays a central role in the economy by providing subsistence and income to a large segment of society, the effects of climate change pose an even more serious economic risk, particularly for nations consisted of agro-zones susceptible to submersion.
In an attempt to mitigate the effects of climate change on agriculture and the environment, farmers worldwide, from both technology-advanced and emerging economies, have begun to adopt new ideas and technologies within their agricultural practice in tandem with traditional farming techniques. Of these, a large number of farmers from different agro-zones have begun to adapt strategies based on native adaptation evidence and capacities, namely, their local and indigenous knowledge. According to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) programme on Local and Indigenous Knowledge Systems, local and indigenous knowledge refers to the understandings, skills, and philosophies developed by societies.
Increased agricultural productivity through adoption and diffusion of modern agricultural technologies is one of the key pathways to monetary growth and transformation in emerging countries [
3,
4,
5]. Within this context, previous studies have attempted to investigate agricultural adaptation strategies related to climate change in Bangladesh, a difficult task given that the agricultural system of Bangladesh is composed of geographically-diverse zones vulnerable to a myriad of circumstances, such as submersion, drought, increased salinity due to sea intrusion, river erosion, and embankment damage, among others. Bearing in mind the complexity of the agricultural system in Bangladesh, [
6] has emphasized the importance of implementing native adaptation strategies aimed at different climatic zones, e.g., submersion-prone, drought-prone, and salinity-prone zones of Bangladesh. According to [
7] integrating adaptation into development is indispensable for sustainable development to occur in developing nations. Thus, in order for Bangladesh to become and remain self-sufficient and food-secure, especially after natural disasters such as flash floods, sufficient climate change adaption measures must be implemented within the agricultural sector. Among these, the dissemination of adaptation knowledge and wisdom plays a key role in strengthening the resilience of Bangladesh’s agricultural sector, as such a practice will aid in safeguarding farmers’ livelihoods and agricultural sustainability. Implementation of adaptation practices can yield positive results for farms, enabling economic growth of individual agricultural farmers, as well as the country as a whole. In this regard, smallholder farmers currently experiencing the effects of climate change have begun to adapt diverse strategies through their native agricultural practices [
8,
9]. Adaptation planning is interconnected to farmers’ knowledge, awareness, and perceptions about climate change. As such, a clear understanding of climate change is necessary for farmers to implement appropriate adaptation strategies and techniques by [
10]. Here, the theme ‘perceptions of climate’ refers to the ways in which climate is regarded, understood, or interpreted by farmers. It can be defined as farmers’ awareness about climate change through their senses. Farmer’s perceptions regarding climate influence how farmers choose to adapt to the impacts of today’s changing climate on their livelihoods. Farmers that perceive climate change as an occurring phenomenon that is human-induced in nature are more likely to seek positive adaptation strategies. Indeed, previous studies have indicated that most farmers perceive the climate as changing, and correspondingly adapt to reduce the negative impacts of climate change [
11,
12,
13]. Studies further show that awareness of climate change [
14,
15,
16] and the adoption of adaptive measures [
17,
18] are influenced by different socio-economic factors. As well, according to [
19], factors such as personal experience, local knowledge, familiarity, and social-learning exchanges between farmers and the public may help to boost mutual understanding and to reduce agricultural systems vulnerability. In the current work, perceptions of farmers towards climate change were converted to a severity index (SI), which is a scaling tool to measure the relative strength of a behavior, attitude, or occurrence. This type of indexing has not been used before in the context of Bangladeshi agriculture.
Sustainable development within the Bangladeshi agricultural sector hinges upon farmer’s beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge regarding climate change, and their resulting present and future planning in view of our changing climate. Sustainability, peaceful agriculture, rural development, and social protection are important measures for the overall development of Bangladesh. Social inclusiveness and information-sharing aim at empowering farmers through the dissemination and sharing of knowledge so that they can take initiative and make decisions to improve their agricultural practice. Climate change adaptation (CCA) in the lowland areas of emerging countries has become essential for continued maintenance of food availability, production, and sustainability. The haor areas of sylhet are susceptible to submersion, and their inhabitants have been facing adverse conditions related to flooding every year within recent years, demanding that measures are taken to better understand and address this issue. In the sampling year 2017, the Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) reported that food availability was greatly affected by low production and productivity due to factors linked to climate change in Bangladesh. Losses in agricultural production stemming from damage due to flooding renders farmers helpless while also creating food insecurity within the country for periods of time, as considerable amounts of national rice production, as well as many livelihoods, depend on agricultural production stemming from these haor areas. In these moments of crisis, farmers have utilized locally acquired knowledge to engage in small scale adaptation practices and production diversification as strategies to mitigate the impact of existing climate conditions. The currently presented study surveyed data from the most severely inflated embankment and flood-prone district in Bangladesh with the aim of attaining information on local perceptions of climate change, which principally affects farmers’ adaptation approaches.
Using this framework, we tried to accomplish the following objectives:
- (1)
To explore the extent of awareness regarding climate change, including farmers’ perceptions and attitudes about climate change, as such factors are significantly associated with positive adaptation of lowland rice farmers to climate change and variability;
- (2)
To identify farmers’ knowledge about climate change vulnerability;
- (3)
To determine, among others, the socioeconomic factors that significantly affect farm-level adaptation strategies due to climate change in the context of lowland rice farmers;
- (4)
To analyze farm-level adaptation strategies after early flash floods due to changing climate conditions.
4. Results
4.1. Farmers’ Perceptions and Attitudes towards Climate Change
Respondents were asked about circumstances they faced in their daily lives with respect to climate change. Findings are shown in
Table 1. Severity Index (SI) values ranged from 69.18% to 93.52%. An SI value of 93.52% was attained for the perception “Climate change affects rice production” (SI = 93.52%). The SI value for the perception “New disease appears in agricultural crops” was calculated at 69.18%, while the perception “Climate change already affects the Bangladeshi agricultural sector” yielded a value of 66.49%, indicating that for the most part, farmers agreed with these two statements. The SI value for “Climate change is already affecting my local climate” was calculated at 84.85%. For the perceptions “Precipitation is increasing” and “Cyclones are increasing”, SI values corresponding to 86.44% and 89.55%, respectively, were attained. An SI value of 71.10% was attained for the attitude “I feel adaptation has become necessary for all of us”. The above findings thus indicate that generally speaking, most farmers perceive agriculture to be affected by climate change and that climate change adaptation measures are necessary for successful agricultural practice and sustainable livelihood.
4.2. Farmers’ Knowledge about Climate Change Vulnerability
Respondents were surveyed on their knowledge about climate change and vulnerability. The attained results are given in
Table 2. Severity indexes corresponding to 74.93%, 62.50%, 50.40% and 38.49% were respectively attained for the surveyed items “Climate is changing”, “Consequences of climate change”, “Major climate events” and “Reasons behind climate change”. Among the respondents, 170 farmers had no knowledge of the causes behind the current increases in drought and flood within the region, while 174 respondents had no comment about this issue, which would indicate they had insufficient knowledge about climate change at the time of the survey.
4.3. Cross Tabulation Results
A chi-square test was performed to assess the proportional differences in adaptation status across selected socio-economic variables, farm earning sources variables, and institutional and market accessibility variables. A distribution of gender, level of education, wealth status, experience, and age of farmers is shown in
Table 3.
The majority of the farmers surveyed were aged between 31 to 45 years and had never attended a formal educational institution. Of the 378 surveyed farmers, 71.7% reported being illiterate, 11% reported attending primary school, and 10.6% reported only knowing how to write and/or sign their names. The percentages of farmers having some form of higher education, such as having graduated, attended higher secondary, or attended secondary education institutions, were 0.5%, 0.8%, and 6.9%, respectively. Moreover, 48.1% of farmers reported yearly incomes of more than 150,000 taka, 38.1% of farmers reported yearly incomes ranging between 50,000–150,000 taka, while 13.8% reported yearly incomes of less than 50,000 taka. A total of 378 farmers, 349 females & 26 males, were included in the sample. The number of male respondents was significantly smaller in comparison to that of female respondents because a large segment of the male farmer population had left their stations at the moment of the survey to earn secondary income as middle men and rickshaw pullers following the early flash flood. Among all respondents, 69.3% of the females surveyed and 7.1% of the male farmers surveyed had already employed adaptation strategies. The results of the survey indicate that 30.4% of surveyed farmers employed adaptation strategies and owned land, while 46% of the surveyed farmers employed adaptation strategies but did not own land. Moreover, 48.1% of the surveyed farmers earned off-farm earnings, which showed a positive correlation to adaptation, while 75.1% of the surveyed farmers attained credit in the form of loans from different non-governmental organizations (NGOs). In terms of market structure, 62.7% of farmers reported that the current rural market structure worked in favor of their adaptation, as they were able to sell their products in such markets, while 13.8 percent farmers held a negative opinion of the existing rural market structure on adaptation, as they had to go to ‘Hat’, which is located far from their villages, to sell their products.
In summary, the variables of gender, age, education, family size, income, land ownership, farming experience, off-farm earning, livestock ownership, cultivation of flood-tolerant rice varieties, short duration boro rice, non-rice rabi crops, distance to local market, credit from NGOs, and rural market structure were shown to be significantly correlated to the adoption of different adaptation strategies.
4.4. Percentage of Farmers Who Have Taken Loans and Employed Adaptation Strategies
Following
Figure 2 shows that 69.3% of the surveyed female farmers and 7.1% of the surveyed male farmers had planned for adaptation. Overall, 23% of female farmers and 2% of male farmers demonstrated negative attitudes towards adaptation. A total of 72% of farmers surveyed had acquired loans for adaptation from different NGOs; among them, 66.7% were female. Hence, it can be surmised that in Bangladesh, NGOs offering credit for climate change adaptation are more likely to work with female farmers than male farmers. Gender-based discrimination, particularly violence against women, remains a major concern and an obstacle to real development in Bangladesh. Women suffer from poverty and economic and social disadvantages at much higher rates than men. Women’s economic dependency limits their opportunities to protest against disadvantages or to take action against discrimination within their own family and society. As such, many NGOs working in various rural districts have special focus on providing assistance to disadvantaged women [
24].
4.5. Factors Affecting Farmers’ Adaptation Practices
Estimated bivariate logistic regression values are given in
Table 4. The value of the adjusted R
2 indicates that the regression model is able to explain approximately 67.9% of the variation in climate change adaptation strategies.
4.5.1. Socioeconomic Status
Age group, education, income, and farming experience were found to be significantly correlated with the implementation of adaptation practices. Female farmers were statistically significantly more likely to implement adaptation strategies than male farmers (AOR: 5.498, CI: 0.925–32.664). Likewise, farmers with primary education were shown to be more likely to implement adaptation strategies (AOR: 2.065, CI: 0.100–4.702). It should be noted that the surveyed villages only have education facilities at the primary level. In order to attain an education above the primary level, local people need to go to town or ‘Mymensingh’ sadar. As such, most local farmers and family members residing in these areas remain uneducated. This lack of schooling translates into insufficient access to information regarding adaptation. The attained results also indicate that there are significant differences in adaptation with respect to land ownership when the socio-economic factor is adjusted. Further, females were shown to have a 49.8% higher chance of implementing adaptation strategies as compared to male farmers when other socio-economic factors were adjusted.
4.5.2. Farm Information
The variable off-farm earning was found to be statistically significant with respect to the adoption of climate change adaptation strategies. Farmers often rely on off-farm income; at the time of the survey, many farmers were working as middle men and rickshaw pullers as a form of earning income after the flash flood. Overall, the ownership of livestock was found to be statistically significant and negatively correlated with adaptation strategies; livestock owners were 20% less likely to adapt in comparison to farmers without livestock. At the time of the survey, most farmers had sold some or all of their livestock due to food shortages. The variable ‘cultivation of flood tolerant rice varieties’ was found to be statistically insignificant, as no farmers were cultivating flood tolerant rice varieties at the time of the survey. Cultivation of short duration boro rice (AOR: 1.997) was found to be statistically significant, showing a positive correlation with adaptation. The odds ratio of farmers cultivating non-rice rabi crops represents the main effect of adaptation. The value of the odds ratio is 2.408 (95% CI: 0.674–5.604); in short, farmers cultivating non-rice rabi crops were more likely to have adapted as compared to those who had not chosen non-rice rabi crops. In our study, this variable was found to be statistically insignificant as most of the farmers surveyed were unable to plant non-rice rabi crops.
4.5.3. Institutional Accessibility and Credit from NGOs
This study showed that the provision of credit by NGOs/GoB was positively correlated with the implementation of adaptation strategies (AOR: 18.489, CI: 6.247–54.725). At the time of the survey, there were many NGOs, including ASA, FIVDB, PKSF, and DADAN, carrying out activities within the surveyed areas. Of these, a large proportion were solely providing credit loans to women stakeholders as part of their gender-focused programming. Micro-credit has become of one of most common and increasingly popular types of NGO initiatives in Bangladesh due to the success this model has had in reaching economically disadvantaged populations, especially women [
25]. Although these NGOs were imposing higher interest rates, farmers still chose to attain loans since the funds were highly needed to mitigate the effects of the flood and allow them to adapt after this event. During the flooding crisis, the government (GoB) declared that NGOs would not collect monthly credit instalments from stakeholders for three consecutive months so as to enable farmers to adapt after flood-related losses.
On the other hand, farmers attaining subsidies for seed following the flood demonstrated a 70.6% lower chance of implementing adaptation strategies. However, it should be noted that the majority of the respondents included in the study were not offered subsidies for seed following the flood. Following the flash flood, no actions were immediately taken by the government to provide subsidies for seed, workshops for adaptation planning, or credit to farmers within the studied region, with few exceptions. Although the GoB distributed subsidies for seed to some farmers during the studied period, most of the farmers surveyed could not avail themselves of these opportunities in our study areas. Stronger GoB institutional access in these remote areas could have enhanced the performance of farmers, as well as enabled them to better implement adaptation strategies.
4.5.4. Market Accessibility and Rural Market Structure
The ratio of institutional and market accessibility was shown to have a strong positive correlation with the implementation of adaptation strategies. Farmers with access to local market structures located within shorter distances displayed a 21.3% higher chance of implementing adaption strategies (AOR: 1.213, CI: 1.067–1.379). This factor was shown to be statistically significant at a 5% level of significance. The rural market structure in Bangladesh has undergone changes within recent years; until recently, local rural markets used to be the only place where farmers could meet to sell their products. These markets have allowed for the establishment of informal farmer networks, as farmers are able to exchange their knowledge and ideas at rural markets, which are attended daily by farmers to sell their wares. On the other hand, ‘Hats’, defined as regional bazars, generally only function once a week. Farmers also attend Hats to sell their products. During the flood, farmers engaged in some adaptation activities to diversify their income, such as fishing, duck rearing, home state gardening, and crop diversification. Within the studied region, farmers were required to commute to the closest Hat in the region, the ‘Netrokona bazar’, which is located at a fair distance from their local communities, so as to find more customers, as local people within their communities were reluctant or unable to buy products during that time at local rural markets due to the ongoing flood-related financial crisis. The Hat bazaar boasts electricity and solar lighting, which imparts extra advantages for sellers and buyers. Overall, market conditions were found to be the most influential factor for adaptation, as farmers were able to learn and implement adaptation strategies based on their local market and ‘Hat’.
4.6. Farmers’ Ranking of Adaptation Practices
Farmers were asked about their adaptation practices. Common adaptation practices included fishing, home state gardening, and changing crop planting time. Over 40% of the surveyed farmers reported fishing as a secondary source of income, more than 35% stated home state gardening as a practice, and 18% reported they had migrated from farming to non-farming. Less than 5% of surveyed farmers listed duck rearing and working as a middle man as secondary income sources (
Table 5).
Other adaptation practices implemented by farmers included reducing the number of livestock, implementing a soil conservation scheme, and short-term migration to urban areas. Among all respondents, 373 farmers did not change crop variety, and 369 farmers did not implement soil conservation schemes due to lack of information regarding these practices. Further, 221 farmers switched to livestock production as opposed to crop raising, and 192 farmers sold their livestock in order to adopt to the hostile environment. The results of the WA index showed that reducing the number of livestock ranked first as an adaptation strategy, while short-term migration ranked as 5th (
Table 6).
5. Discussion
The results of the currently presented cross-sectional study among flood-affected farmers in Bangladesh, which employed a severity index format survey to measure attitudes, perceptions, and knowledge of climate change among this population, corroborate previous research by [
26], indicating that most farmers in Bangladesh believe that climate change is a major factor in the adverse conditions currently affecting the Bangladeshi agricultural sector as well as the local climate. The results of this work also corroborate previous studies on rural populations [
27,
28,
29,
30], substantiating previous findings that marginal farmers from emerging countries comprise one the most vulnerable populations with respect to climate change; in this work, the vast majority of the population under study was found to not have access to sufficient resources to cope with the adverse impact of climate change on their livelihoods.
This study also found that during adverse times, farmers were able to perceive and implement different local adaptation strategies, which helped them to mitigate their losses and supplement their livelihood [
2,
3,
9,
31]. Further, in agreement with findings by similar studies in Bangladesh [
32,
33] and developed countries [
26], our study uncovered that farmers were also adopting poor adaptation strategies in times of crisis such as migration—a factor which has further contributed to the low productivity of rice. Our study showed that farmers were unable to sufficiently mitigate the effects of climate change as most farmers found themselves unable to change their crop variety or implement a soil conservation scheme due to poor knowledge and/or resources. These two principal strategies were ranked third and fourth in the preference scale by farmers participating in this study. Moreover, consistent with the other research [
9,
34,
35], in this study, farmers were found to be more likely to adopt local adaptation strategies instead of adopting scientific benchmark strategies such as crop rotation, cultivation of flood tolerant rice, etc. The results of the bivariate logistic regression showed that females were more likely to implement positive adaptation strategies than male farmers; while most male farmers chose to migrate after the flash flood to seek work elsewhere, female farmers preferred to take credit loans from NGOs so as to rebuild or adapt their livelihoods. As such, in agreement with previous findings, this work demonstrated that factors such as gender of the head of household and access to extension services on crop production exert great influence on the type and extent of adaptation strategies undertaken by farmers [
9,
36,
37,
38,
39]. Lastly, the data gathered on off-farm earning strategies demonstrated that farmers supplementing their income through off-farm earning were 19% more likely to sufficiently adapt after adverse times, a finding that is in agreement with previous research by [
27]. Rural market structure was also found to be an influential factor for adaptation, which is consistent with other studies in Bangladesh [
8]. In agreement with previous calls to action by [
40], the findings of this research point at the need for further research on post-disaster impact and mitigation strategies, as merely mitigating the sources of vulnerability that increase the risk of disaster have been proven insufficient to address the needs of this vulnerable population.
6. Conclusions
Changing climate remains a major obstacle in the field of agriculture. Changes in climate continue to increase the incidence of early flash floods, a phenomenon which has been increasingly affecting agriculture for many successive years in our study areas. Farmers in Bangladesh have expressed their concern about climate vulnerability, stating that climate change is a major factor impacting the local climate and contributing to the adverse conditions being experienced within the Bangladeshi agricultural sector. This study helped shed light into a wide range of factors that are significantly associated with farmer’s adaptation to climate change. Further, our findings indicated that farmers are very interested to work alongside the GoB and NGOs to mitigate the effects of our changing climate by attending workshops and training seminars aimed at learning strategies to reduce climate vulnerability as well as adapt in post-disaster scenarios. The implications of these findings are important since a large number of marginal farmers are struggling to cope with climate change related environmental changes, and to sustain their livelihoods. If corrective actions are not taken, farmers will continue to face increasingly worse adverse conditions caused by climate change. GoB and NGOs are working for the welfare of Bangladesh, with NGOs (BRAC, ASHA, FIVDB, Suchana Foundation) being pioneers to promote vulnerable communities. GoB organizational wings are also working in this regard along with Non-governmental organizations. Although GoB co-operative wings are present in every Upazila, farmers have only gotten small benefits from these wings. Bangladeshi farmers could benefit from increased access to knowledge through the implementation of more training and knowledge-sharing workshops about climate-adaptive livelihoods through the Bangladesh agricultural office and the Co-operative office, among other governmental offices. Moreover, farmers would benefit from attaining more pertinent climate-related information through radio, mobile short messaging (SMS), and television advertisements, among other forms of communication. Presently, some farmers are receiving mobile SMS; however, this service is limited to some areas. In order to take more advantage of this form of communication, the GoB should extend their service to remote areas as well. Likewise, knowledge-sharing workshops should be extended to vulnerable parts of the country so as to create better awareness among farmers in remote areas. As inhabitants of remote, flood-prone area, farmers have had to struggle for years to secure food, as crops often get destroyed in floods. Access to information and training on techniques to cultivate flood-resilient rice varieties as well as vegetables on elevated land during flood periods could vastly help improve their circumstances. Other factors that may have a positive impact on this population include better implementation of follow-up activities of different projects funded by GoB and NGOs to ensure sustainable development, increased seed subsidies, as well as distribution of better quality seed varieties. Likewise, better coordination among different NGOs and GoB branches would also benefit farmers to this end. Lastly, farmers would also benefit from the implementation of weather- and climate-related technologies, as many existing problems related to agriculture can nowadays be mitigated or prevented through effective use of modern weather technologies. In response to the frequent problems associated with the three consecutive floods to have taken place in these study areas, policy makers should take urgent measures from both inside and outside the embankments, including the following recommended measures: (a) increase the discharge capacity of the rivers; (b) deal with hindrances that do not allow passage of flood waters from inside embankments; (c) undertake careful planning and timely implementation of financial support measures by the GoB or other sources so that farmers will not be heavily indebted; and (d) establish/expand the number of training activities, workshops, and skill development resources within the agricultural sector, particularly in remote areas currently being underserved in this regard. In addition, local institutions such as Union Councils and local community groups should endeavor to work as brokers for social networking through the provision of knowledge, information, and advisory services to enhance adaptation.