Human capital as a turnkey resource in resilience to cyclones and storm surges: Empirical evidence from coastal Bangladesh.

What are the best methods to build cyclone and storm resilience in a developing country? We examine the multiple resources that contribute to storm resilience in the highly vulnerable ecological context of coastal Bangladesh, finding that human capital is a critical turnkey resource that enables and facilitates the use of other resources in household responses to floods, storm surges and other cyclone damage. Drawing on a household survey of nine coastal villages in different ecological zones of coastal Bangladesh, we use principal component analysis (PCA) and multiple regression to identify four components of storm resilience and a human capital index that, along with other household resources, predicts resilience to storms and cyclones. We then use this human capital index as a policy tool to map the proportion of highly resilient households in these nine villages and identify additional methods for building a stronger understanding of storm resilience.

Diversify, produce or buy? An analysis of factors contributing to household dietary diversity among shrimp and non-shrimp farmers in coastal Bangladesh.

Until the Covid-19 pandemic, Bangladesh had reported consistent improvements regarding its food and nutrition security (FNS) status, and yet, the country still features poor FNS outcomes among parts of its population. In rural coastal regions of the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna delta, farming households' vulnerability is particularly exacerbated by a range of environmental hazards, increasing challenges for agriculture to contribute to higher FNS levels. In the context of existing literature on the trade-offs between subsistence agriculture and cash-earning livelihood activities, vis-à-vis food and nutrition security outcomes, this article assesses the relative contribution of crop diversification vis à vis other factors on the households' Food Consumption Score (FCS) in specific livelihood contexts. We provide differentiated analyses between primarily export-oriented shrimp farming and non-shrimp farming households, so policy makers can better address FNS targets. Quantitative data from 1,188 sample households across the delta were analysed through descriptive and linear regression analyses. Results show that households cultivating shrimp have a significantly higher dietary diversity than households that do not. Among shrimp farmers, crop diversification has the relatively strongest significant positive effect on dietary diversity, suggesting part of the aquacultural crops are geared towards subsistence. By contrast, crop diversification seems to have a negative effect on dietary diversity among households that do not produce shrimp, especially when different agricultural crops are combined. Importantly, both for shrimp and non-shrimp farmers, crop diversification systems combining agriculture with aquaculture, and agroforestry seem to improve diverse diets among households. While by no means a panacea to solving FNS challenges among rural households, we suggest that promoting specific crop diversification systems could be a beneficial pathway to improved FNS outcomes.