Revisiting Agriculture Land Use for Disaster Resilient Sustainable Development

Abstract

The South Asia Region (SAR) consists of eight countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Rural South Asia is the home of over two-thirds of the population in the region, representing about one- third of the total rural population in world. This region is characterized by highly diverse agro-climatic conditions across and within countries that range from the atolls of the Maldives, to the deserts in western India, the tropical fertile Gangetic Plain to the temperate hills and mountains of the Himalayas in Nepal, and is also witness to many natural disasters. Despite fairly accurate early warning and risk management, casualty and losses from natural disasters are high, particularly among the poor agriculture-dependent rural communities. Complex ecological, socio-cultural, economic and political dimensions of the context-specific phenomena underlie the vulnerabilities of these poor farming communities. A growing concern is the increasing marginalization of agriculture land, with average farm size decreasing in most low- and lower-middle income countries.