Bangladesh - Fase 2
Major focus
Bandarban is a district in South-Eastern Bangladesh and a part of the Chittagong Division. One of the three hill districts of Bangladesh and a part of the Chittagong or Chattogram Hill Tracts (CHT), Spanning 4,479 km², it is not only the remotest district of the country but also the least populated with a population of 4,04,093 comprising 1,79,400 from ethnic communities (48%) and 2,24,693 Bengali people. The district headquarters, Bandarban town is the only unit that approaches anything near a city. The rest of the area is divided into 7 Upazilas, which are in turn divided into varying numbe
... Leer másrs of unions. Each union is a cluster of paras and villages. There are more than fifteen ethnic minorities living in the district besides the Bengalis, including the Bomong, Marma, Tanchangya, Tripura, Lushei, Khumi, Chak, Chakma, Rakhine or Arakanese, Riyang, and Pankho. Most of the people of this district especially ethnic people are self-dependent, producing and making their own food. Districts of CHT chiefly produce rice, cotton, tobacco, maize, potato, sugarcane, turmeric, and ginger and are famous for vegetable and fruit production (mango, pineapple, banana, papaya, jackfruit, orange, lychee, guava, and lemon). Rice and other agricultural products are also sufficient enough to fulfill their own requirements and transport them to other districts. Communities in the region are increasingly experiencing the impacts of environmental and climate change-related problems on their lives and livelihoods, with deforestation, landslide, seasonal water scarcity (dry season), soil erosion, degrading soil fertility due to soil erosion, and flash floods becoming common phenomena causing devastation. Traditionally indigenous communities practice jhum cultivation, a local form of ‘shifting’ or ‘rotational’ slash and burn cultivation. However, harmful and unsustainable agricultural practices such as rotation of shifting cultivation in very short intervals, tuber crops cultivation without mulching, tobacco cultivation, use of firewood in tobacco processing kilns, and depletion of natural forests due to frequent clearing of natural vegetation for jhum cultivation are leading to gradual degradation of soil and forests. Although the size of the population is less than 300,000 in this district, it seriously lacks basic health facilities and results in underweight, scarcity of safe drinking water, and malnutrition. Boro-fallow-T. Aman, fallow-fallow-T. Aman, fallow-Aus+non-rice (jhum), and vegetable-fallow-fallow are the major cropping patterns in CHT, which cover more than 40% of the net cropped area. About 30% area is covered by annual crops, chiefly fruits like banana, pineapple, and papaya and, spices like ginger and turmeric. Percentages of single-cropped area and double-cropped have been found to be 33.29 and 32.10 of the net cropped area in the region. The cropping intensity of the CHT is much lower than the national average. Initiatives are required to be taken to increase the productivity of exclusively rice-based cropping patterns. Cultivation of short duration high yield potential Aus rice varieties, suitable for jhum, along with other species of crops for mixed and relay cropping with improved production practices are needed to be adopted to increase productivity. Multi-strata fruit orchards (MSFO) and complex fruit and timber-based mixed agroforest (SALT-2) can be promoted to maintain agricultural production and environmental gradient. Agro-forestry, watershed-based production unit, multi-layered home garden, contour planting, papaya/flower cultivation in jhum, community forest management, seepage water harvesting can be the potential technologies to be adopted and expanded by the hill dwellers for sustainable livelihood. The Upazilas having a higher cropping pattern index can be studied in-depth to extrapolate potential cropping patterns to other Upazilas with similar environments. Further studies are required to better utilize the single and double-cropped areas and to diversify cropping patterns through the inclusion of new crops or crop varieties. Leer menos
Línea(s) de Acción: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Palabras clave: Data & Evidence, Environment and Climate, Governance, Human rights, Women & Youth Empowerment