The New Nation - Internet Edition

Shamim Jahangir

The Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) has taken up a project to reduce loss of crops and livestock at ten disaster prone upazilas through disaster management adaptation process.

The project styled " Livelihood Adaptation to Climate Change (LACC-2) will be implemented at a cost of seven lakh US dollars. It will be jointly financed by Bangladesh government, UNDP, European Commission and UK Department for International Development.

The main objective of the project is to ensure sustainable food production, reduce livestock losses through capacity building and acquainting farmers with new technologies to deal with the problems of climate change.

Farmers will be trained on the process of reservation of water for irrigation in drought prone areas during Aman season and mechanism to be used at coastal areas for the production of foodgrains.The Food and Agriculture Organisation ( FAO ) will provide support to the project, according to project sources. The upazilas where the project is now being implemented are Nachole,

Gomostapur in Chapai Nowabganj , Sapahar and Porsha in Naogaon, Lalpur and Bagatipara in Natore, Dacope and Terokhada in Khulna and Bhandaria and Nazirpur in Pirojpur.

The DAE and FAO experts will impart training to the farmers on how to adapt to climate change process. Besides, they will also help the farmers on different methods for increasing food, fish and livestock production to ensure the food security.

The experts will also help the poor farmer to build up their capacity at the village level to combat the menace of climate change through adaptation process.

The government has implemented LACC-1 project recently in Chapainawabganj and Noagaon districts at a cost of $2 lakh dollars. Under the project, a total of 250 farmers of these two districts received training on adaptation process to Climate Change.

An expert of LACC said that the government would extend this project now being implemented on an experimental basis would be extended to other areas across the country.