Tilapia farming in Bangladesh: Adaptation to climate change

Abstract

In Bangladesh, aquaculture is critically important in terms of providing food and nutri-tion, sustainable livelihoods, income, and export earnings. Nevertheless, aquaculture in Bangladesh has faced recent concerns due to climate change. Aquaculture is vulnerable to a combination of climatic factors, such as global warming, rainfall variation, flood, drought, temperature fluctua-tion, and salinity change. Considering the vulnerability of fish production to the impacts of climate change, tilapia farming is one of the possible strategies for adaptation to climate change. The posi-tive culture attributes of tilapia are their tolerance to low water levels and poor water quality with rainfall variation, temperature fluctuation, and salinity change. In fact, tilapia farming is possible in a wide range of water environments, including freshwater, brackish water, and saltwater condi-tions. We suggest that appropriate tilapia culture strategies with institutional support and collab-oration with key stakeholders are needed for adaptation to environmental change.