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The drought prone North-West Bangladesh is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, particularly because of less water availability in the dry period and high water requirement for crop production. Improved understanding of recent changes in crop water demand in the dry season is important for the water resources management in the region. A study was carried out to determine the potential impacts of recent climate change during last three decades on trends of water requirements of Boro rice. The reference crop evapotranspiration (ETo), potential crop water requirement (∑ETC), effective rainfall during the crop growing period (ER), potential irrigation requirement for crop evapotranspiration (∑ETC − ER) and net irrigation requirement of Boro rice were estimated using observed daily climate data in the CropWat model for the period of 1980 to 2013 for four North-West districts. Significant decreasing trends of ETo were observed in most of the dry months due to increasing relative humidity and decreasing wind-speed and sun-shine hours. The results showed decreasing trends of potential crop water requirement, i.e. the total crop evapotranspiration (∑ETC), of Boro rice due to decreasing reference crop evapotranspiration and shorter crop growing periods. The variations in trends of potential irrigation requirement for crop evapotranspiration (∑ETC − ER) found among different districts, are mainly linked to variations in trends of changes in effective rainfall. The net irrigation requirement of Boro rice has decreased, by 11% during the last three decades at an average rate of −4.4 mm year−1, instead of decreasing effective rainfall, mainly because of high rate of decrease of crop evapotranspiration (−5.9 mm year−1). Results indicate that a warming climate does not always result in higher agricultural water use and that climate change can also result in reduced water demands because of changes in humidity, wind-speed and sun-shine hours.

Estuarine aquatic systems and braided rivers in and adjacent to the Sundarbans and the vast area of the Ganges tidal floodplain next to the core forest area in Bangladesh holds rice aquatic faunal diversity and provides plenty of opportunities to grow fish, shrimps and crabs. Currently these systems provide direct employment opportunity for 1.2 million people and indirect or seasonal livelihood for more than 10 million people across the southwest coast. Hilsa is the largest fishery in this region and shrimp brings the highest cash and export earnings. Proper implementation of fisheries regulation is critical to ensure conservation of the rich fish diversity of this region as well as to continue to support livelihood of millions of people living on fisheries. While aquaculture is the major contributor to national fish production, agricultural GDP and export earning, it requires planned advancement from the current state to continue to grow in harmony with environment. Integration with rice and other crops, and with mangrove wherever possible can bring long-term sustainability of these systems. Change in the river flow due to siltation and reduced upstream flow, climate change, sea level rise, outbreak of disease in fish and crustaceans are major challenges for future growth and sustainability of both aquaculture and fisheries in this region. Collaborative and multi-disciplinary research should be undertaken to address these challenges. In addition, there should be mechanism to bring research outputs into use and make impact on sustainability.

Mitigation of carbon dioxide emissions has become an utmost important global agenda, keeping into consideration the associated environmental hardships. As a result, it is important to unearth the factors which can neutralize carbon emissions to transform the world economy into a low-carbon one. Against this backdrop, this study explores the carbon dioxide neutralizing effects of economic growth, international tourism, clean energy promotion, and technological innovation in the context of five European Union (EU-5) nations during the 1990-2015 period. This study's main contribution is in terms of its approach to test the interaction effect between foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows and energy innovation on carbon dioxide emissions. The econometric analysis chronologically involves the employment of unit root, cointegration, causality, and regression methods. Overall, the findings support the inverted-U-shaped economic growth-carbon dioxide emissions nexus to verify the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. Besides, the Pollution Haven Hypothesis in the context of the selected panel is also verified as higher FDI inflows are seen to boost the carbon dioxide emission levels. The results also confirm that energy innovation moderates the harmful effect of air transport (a proxy for international tourism) on carbon dioxide emissions during the developing stage of the tourism industry. On the other hand, renewable energy promotion is found to curb carbon dioxide emissions. These findings suggest that the European governments need to enhance investments in their respective renewable energy sectors and simultaneously ensure the development of clean industries, which can collectively help these nations become carbon-neutral in the future.

Digested, undigested and green organic amendments were used to improve soil fertility and minimize any harmful effects. To understand the events in soil, we evaluated the nitrogen (N) and sulfur (S...

Over the period 1980-2016, this study looks into the causal relations between carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, energy consumption (EC), foreign direct investment (FDI), and gross domestic product (GDP) in five South Asian countries (Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka). To achieve the research objectives, panel unit root tests, panel co-integration, autoregressive distributed lag model, and Granger causality tests are used. In the long run, GDP has a positive impact on CO2 emissions, while squared GDP has a negative impact, confirming the framework of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) in Pakistan and Sri Lanka. However, in the short run along with these two countries, Bangladesh also confirms the EKC hypothesis. Among these five countries, Bangladesh and Nepal support the pollution haven hypothesis, but India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka support the FDI halo hypothesis. The EC has a large positive impact on CO2 emissions across five countries. In the long run, the Granger causality test confirms one-way causation from EC to CO2 emissions and bidirectional causality of FDI and CO2. These countries might encourage clean energy technology through FDI without jeopardizing GDP and environmental quality. The findings of the study provide a guideline for these countries to reduce CO2 emissions, achieve a long-term green GDP, and combat global warming.

Despite suffering significantly from the adverse impacts of climate change and human-induced hazards, many people at risk deliberately choose not to migrate from hazard-prone areas in coastal Bangladesh. As many of them encounter significant challenges in maintaining their livelihoods, ascertaining how and under what circumstances voluntary non-migration decisions occur is crucial. Only a handful of studies have investigated whether individuals and groups who decide to stay put in the face of climatic hazards consider their decision to be an adaptive action. In this regard, this study contributes to the existing literature by empirically investigating the voluntary non-migration decision as an adaptation strategy through an exploration of the factors affecting this decision. We employed a systematic random sampling technique and selected 627 respondents from two climatic hazard-prone coastal districts: Khulna and Satkhira. Using the Generalized Structural Equation Model (GSEM), we found that voluntary non-migrants (84% of total respondents) appeared to enjoy the significant advantage of access to their communities' basic need provision and social support. Furthermore, the social, psychological, and economic opportunities found at their existing location (e.g., better income prospects, affordable living costs, receipt of financial help during post-disaster periods, and skills allowing them to stay in that location), as well as their access to local natural resources, strengthened their social capital and thus influenced their desire to stay. Together, these factors enhanced people's adaptability to climatic shocks and motivated them to choose voluntary non-migration as an adaptation option.

In this research, efforts were put to demonstrate synergistic interactions between bioenergy generation and wastewater treatment. The extent of such synergistic effect was assessed against wastewater effluents released from the beverage industry through the operation of a membrane-less truncated conical (TC) microbial fuel cell (MFC). A graphite-based reactor was operated for five cycles in batch mode using beverage industry wastewater as an organic substrate. Maximum bioelectricity produced on the fifth operating cycle corresponded to a voltage of 338 mV and a power of 1.14 mW at 100 Ω. The MFC recorded a higher substrate degradation rate (0.84 kg of chemical oxygen demand [COD]/m3-day) accompanied by the development of an electroactive biofilm and polarization behavior (e.g., a reduction in internal resistance from 323 Ω to 197 Ω over five operation cycles). Cyclic voltammetry showed a maximum performance of the biofilm during the fifth cycle (through its enrichment) as interpreted by oxidation and reduction currents of 2.48 and -2.21 mA, respectively. The performance of the proposed MFC was superior to other designs reported previously in both effluent treatment and bioenergy generation. A maximum treatment efficiency of 84.4% (in 385 h) was seen at an organic load (COD) of 3500 mg/L with the specific power yield (0.504 W/Kg of substrate (COD) removal) and volumetric power yield (15.03 W/m3). Our experimental studies support that the proposed system could be upscaled to realize the commercial operation.