Giving priority to adaptation with climate change issue stressed

RANGPUR, Apr 24 (BSS): Renowned experts said that top priority should be put on adaptation with the adverse impacts of climate change while taking effective steps to reduce further degradation of the situation. They urged all to ensure optimum utilisation of cultivable land and innovation of newer technologies to keep agro-productions increasing for ensuring food security amid adverse impacts of climate change. The ongoing climate change has already caused grievous concern to every sector including the country's agriculture, irrigation, navigation, ecology, bio- diversity, weather, public health, environment and underground water levels, they said. As a result, natural calamities like cyclones, droughts, earth quake, global warming, water contamination, salinity, degradation of aquatic systems, silting and drying up of rivers, lowering of underground water levels are happening. The situation degrades faster due to melting ice for rising temperature and continuous emissions of huge Green House Gases and 'indifferent attitudes of some responsible nations' in taking adequate steps to reduce the threats, they said. The experts said this while talking to the news agency on the adverse impacts of ongoing climate change and the way forward to adapt with the situation at the national and global prospects with a view to save the planet from the man-made catastrophes. The experts included Regional Coordinator of Stress Tolerant Rice for Poor Farmers in Africa & South Asia (STRASA) programme Dr US Singh, its Bangladesh Country Manager Dr MA Bari, Former Vice Chancellor of Jahangir Nagar University Prof Dr Amirul Islam Chowdhury and Additional Director of the DAE Mohsin Ali. They also included, noted agri-scientist and Dinajpur Hub Manager of Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) Dr MA Mazid, Director (Resource and Environment) of RDRS Bangladesh Dr Syed Samsuzzaman and its Head of Agriculture and Environment Dr MG Neogi. The experts elaborately narrated the huge adverse impacts in every sector of Bangladesh including its agriculture as elsewhere in the world with various extents. They narrated various national and international research analyses, findings, visible and invisible impacts and possible future consequences of climate change with a series of coordinated suggestions in a bid to overcome the formidable threats. If the present degrading rate of climate change continues, one-fourth of Bangladesh would submerge under seawater by 2050 making 30 million people displaced the country alarmingly be prone to frequent calamities. The climate change has already changed periods of appearance of different seasons causing concern to the agriculture sector in recent decades and the sector might suffer further and total set back, they cautioned. The experts put maximum emphasis on innovation of newer technologies for cultivation of stress tolerance crops by innovating newer varieties and using the latest technologies and popularise those among the farmers at the grassroots. They blamed the industrialised and richer nations, who are not taking adequate steps to reduce the extent of global climate change to save the most affected poorer nations, the planet and its habitat from possible 'manufactured' catastrophes in future. The process of natural imbalance might take severe turns and even can stop agricultural productions or reduce the same to such a level that would not be enough to feed the human being on the earth, they feared.