Resilience of coastal agricultural systems in Bangladesh: Assessment for agroecosystem stewardship strategies

Assessments of “resilience” are becoming a priority across multiple sectors. Specifically, the coastal agricultural system in Bangladesh faces a multitude of problems such as sea level rise. Building resilience for this system is thus important in accelerating the country’s socio-economic development. Therefore, the objectives of this study are (a) to assess resilience of coastal agricultural systems and (b) to develop coastal agroecosystem stewardship strategies in Bangladesh. Resilience was assessed quantitatively, based on an established framework that includes three capacities (i.e., absorptive, adaptive and transformative) and five dimensions, namely, social, economic, ecological, physical and institutional. Fifteen indicators were developed by applying an assemblage of top-down and bottom-up approaches. A structured questionnaire was used to survey 330 households from 15 villages in…