Resilience in food-trade network of Bangladesh under changing climate

Abstract

Rising temperature and unstable precipitation pattern due to climate change along with a variety of natural disasters affect the agricultural production around the world. Any changes in crop production scenarios would lead to a change inpatterns and intensities of crop trade (import and export), worldwide.Crop trade scenarios in Bangladesh, which depends significantly on imports, would also affect due to the global change. As Bangladesh is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, change in any crop trade scenario might have a significant impact on country’s food supply. It is critical to characterize and study the topology of the dynamics of food-trade network, as well as its resilience and abilityto withstand disruptions, both, on a global and local (Bangladesh perspective) scale. This study proposes an approach to assess the global and Bangladesh’s resilience and efficiency in food trade in changing climate. Here, the global trade data for rice, maize, and wheat for 31 years is used to build the trade network. These networks are analyzed by applying the network science algorithm to understand the existing topology, resilience, and efficiency, the centrality of Bangladesh compared to its neighbors, and Bangladesh’s shock-withstanding capacity. The major findings of the research are that the global cereal grain network has been identified as disassortative and the connections between countries are increasing over time. Looking at the Eigenvector Centrality evolution and the clustering coefficient evolution it was found that Bangladesh is gradually connecting to the more important trading partner. The assessment of the shock propagation finds that the resilience of Bangladesh appears zero if its important neighbors are removed considering its present capacity. Bangladesh’s maize import has been found to be most vulnerable, the country’s system cost needs to be increased by 15.4% to withstand the shock due to climate-change-related grain reduction vulnerability. Increasing the trade diversity and number of neighbors also can be an option to encounter the impact.