Assessing vulnerability and climate risk to agriculture for developing resilient farming strategies in the Ganges Delta

The Ganges Delta supports a unique coastal ecosystem that is highly susceptible to global climate change. This paper presents results from a study on climate change impacts on coastal agriculture in the deltaic regions of Bangladesh and India. The study examined how risk emerges from the interaction of hazard, exposure and vulnerability. Climate hazards for the 89 administrative units (upazila in Bangladesh and block in India) were assessed using future climate data from the IPCC’s 6th assessment report. Hazard levels were assessed by integrating the impacts of four temperature extremes and five rainfall extremes critical to crop growth. Through an extensive literature review, 18 biophysical and socio-economic variables were identified as critical and policy-relevant, including three related to exposure and…