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Flexible, sand-filled, geotextile bags (geobags) have been used in both India and Bangladesh along the banks of the Brahmaputra for protection against riverbank erosion. Geotextile containers have been researched extensively for their use in coastal structures; however, there is a gap in knowledge of the application of smaller geobags used in riverbank protection structures. In 2018, flume experiments (scaled 1:7) were performed to study the incipient motion of geobags and the methodology for sizing geobags. Building on the data collected from the flume experiments, numerical models have been employed to gain further insight into the hydraulic forces acting on the bags. The numerical models have been created using ANSYS CFX. While there is not enough data to obtain a Shields parameter which can be used for design purposes, initial estimates find the Shields value for geobags lies around 0.09, which is much larger than the value for rocks, around 0.045. The results from this study suggest that the Shields parameter varies with fill percentage of the bags. This paper also presents first results on the roughness of underwater geobag aprons. • Building on data collected from flume experiments, numerical models have been employed to gain further insight into the hydraulic forces acting on geobags. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wetland degradation and loss of wetland is one of the emerging challenges against sustaining such worthy environmental capital having plenty of goods and services. In Barind tract of India and Bangladesh, such trend of wetland conversion is highly explicit. Present paper attempted to capture such trend of wetland loss, conversion of wetland and their associated reasons behind. At present total wetlands area of the basin is 220.9 km 2 and which is 35.78% lower than pre-dam wetland coverage. Flow modification triggered by Komardanga dam (34.35% for average flow and 52.24% for peak stream flow have declined) is emerged as one the major reasons behind wetlands loss. It also causes reduction of active flood prone area by 39.72% as well as inconsistent water service to wetlands. De-linking of Punarbhaba river system from Tista river system is another historical cause behind lowering of flow and flood magnitude in Punarbhaba. Loss of tie channels is also responsible for irregular water service to the wetlands. In last 30 years, about 100 km 2 of wetland is transformed into agricultural land, which points out the responsibility of agricultural extension for wetland deterioration. So, periodic monitoring of wetlands, release of ecological flow and stop agricultural encroachment are necessary for sustaining wetland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the results from a lab-in-the-field experiment conducted in Bangladesh and India that examines the influence of religion and relative status on trust and trustworthiness. We find that in both locations individuals with minority status, irrespective of their religion, exhibit positive in-group bias in trust, while individuals with majority status show positive out-group bias in trustworthiness. This suggests that behavior is not driven by religious identity per se but is highly influenced by the relative status it generates within the population. Within both groups, heterogeneity with respect to how strongly individuals associate with the group identity affects behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Three studies in India and Bangladesh use pro-WEAI to examine empowerment impacts of agricultural interventions and labor market changes. • Pro-WEAI shows potential in detecting empowerment impacts within the project lifespan. • Findings suggest the need for intentionality in designing women's empowerment projects. • It is important to collect data on both women and men to track progress toward both women's empowerment and gender equality. This introduction to a special section describes how a recently developed measure, the project-level Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) can be used to assess empowerment impacts of agricultural development interventions in India and Bangladesh as well as broader changes in rural labor markets. The special section comprises three papers. The first examines the impact of membership in self-help groups in five states in rural India on women's and men's empowerment and gender equality. The second presents experimental evidence from a pilot project in Bangladesh that provided trainings in agricultural extension, nutrition behavior change communication, and gender sensitization to husbands and wives together. The third investigates changes in women's roles within the jute value chain in the Southern Delta region of Bangladesh as household members migrate out of the study area and the availability of male labor declines. Although these papers focus on Bangladesh and India, pro-WEAI can be applied to impact assessments of agricultural development projects more generally. The three papers show both the usefulness of this new measure in detecting changes in empowerment indicators within the lifespan of a project and the value of having explicit empowerment objectives in agricultural development projects. The papers also demonstrate the value of having data on both men and women so that project designers can be more intentional about including both of them and monitoring outcomes for both to promote more gender equitable outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Countries with populations and economic activity concentrated in low-lying coastal regions are vulnerable to sea-level rise. • As the ocean advances inland, millions of coastal inhabitants will have to retreat, either by choice or force majeure. • Linkages among environmental stress, public assistance and population change are assessed for coastal India and Bangladesh. • Compensatory public assistance strongly dampens the migration response to rising environmental stress. • Damage compensation should direct public resources to households that choose to relocate as the coastal threat mounts. Linkages among climate change–related environmental stress, public assistance, and the spatial pattern of population change are assessed for neighboring coastal areas of India and Bangladesh. Environmental stress is measured using historical cyclone impacts, salinization, and land loss from erosion. Household migration decisions are based on current and expected future income streams in different locations. Rising environmental damage raises costs, but it may also induce increased public assistance that moderates or neutralizes those costs, diminishing migration incentives, even in areas hard-hit by climate change. Econometric estimates for the Sundarbans region shared by India and Bangladesh suggest that endogenous public assistance strongly dampens the migration response to rising environmental stress in both countries, though the assistance response and migration dampening are lower in Bangladesh. A broader analysis for the coastal region from India's Odisha State to eastern Bangladesh finds that present and past cyclone impacts are highly significant for explaining coastal population changes, although responses are lower in India because of lower environmental stress and greater public-assistance intensity. A counterfactual simulation suggests that, as a result of cyclones since 1970, the affected regions are 8–10% less populous in Bangladesh but only 2% less populous in India. The paper's findings motivate a discussion of the implications for alternative policy regimes as land erosion increases, and sea-level rise and salinization continue with climate change. After comparing the efficiency and equity of regimes that provide universal damage compensation or leave coastal households to fend for themselves, the paper suggests an alternative approach that focuses public resources on compensation for households that choose to relocate as the coastal threat mounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As selective breeding programs are time-consuming and expensive, it is critical that clients preferred traits are accurately identified. This is important to achieve value for money and adoption of selectively improved fish, and an essential foundation for effective contributions of genetic improvements to farming system. Data on fish trait preferences of smallholder farmers are rare; when these do exist, there is no information on whether the preferences of men and women are similar or not. The present work reports the first gender-disaggregated study of trait preferences of men and women from farming households for rohu carp (L. rohita) in Bangladesh (288 respondents) and India (270 respondents), addressing a major segment of aquaculture production in south Asia. The paper generates a nuanced, novel, and comparative understanding of the preferred characteristics through a survey of smallholder farmers that: 1) uses open-ended questions relating to producer and consumer perspectives; and, 2) applies a stated choice experiment using 1000minds software to address trade-offs in choices between traits for a subset of (58–38) respondents. General preferences derived from expressed likes or dislikes emphasized the importance of good taste, characteristics indicating freshness and safety such as aspects of appearance and color, as expected for a perishable product, and of value for money, including size of fish or relative flesh quantity. The overall pattern of preferences were similar for men and women, but there were differences in that men focused more on economic-related characteristics and women more on characteristics associated with nutritional value and food safety. When producers identified what to improve, they focused on larger size fish, reduced culture period, fry survival and disease resistance. When choosing between traits in pair-wise comparison exercises, ranking of traits was similar for both men and women in both Bangladesh and India. Significant differences were only observed between genders for the lower ranked traits in Bangladesh. Larger size fish as a charateristic ranked first in all groups, but there were marked differences between the importance of price and taste in the two countries. Methodologically, the study demonstrated that general preferences, do not automatically translate into characteristics for improvement by breeding programs, and the latter were not necessarily an accurate guide to the preferences expressed when specific tradeoffs were considered. These findings emphasize the need for well-designed and targeted surveys to be able to accurately define trait preferences, in particular to identify the relative values of heritable traits for practical application in breeding programs. • This is the first report of trait preferences of men and women farmers for rohu carp (L. rohita) in Bangladesh and India. • The study captures production and consumption perspective of fish producers in a dual-household survey • Mixed method and stated choice experiment (i.e. 1000 minds software) approaches are adapted • The priority focus in India was larger sized fish but in Bangladesh on improved growth rate and reduced culture period. • The study emphasize the need for specific questions to be able to accurately define trait preferences for breeding programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigations of changing the flow regime and flow prediction are of vital societal and hydro-ecological importance in a transboundary river like Punarbhaba river between India and Bangladesh. The present paper investigated flow regime though advance periodicity models (Morlet's wavelet transformation) at the seasonal scale. Flow prediction using advanced machine learning techniques like Support vector machine (SVM), Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Hybrid wavelet ANN (W-ANN), Random forest(RF) capturing the periodicity, duration, cyclic or semi-cyclic nature of flow wave or wavelet from the historical time series data (1978–2017) is very crucial for environmental flow management and estimating present and future states of environmental flow. Flow alteration modeling (using heat map) and estimation of environmental flow (using duration curve shifting and RVA methods) are another vital objectives of this work to know the present and future hydro-ecological state. The result of periodicity clearly identified two distinct flow regimes before and after 1992-93 triggered by damming over there in 1992. All the prediction models identified the declining trend of flow in all the seasons, however hybrid wavelet ANN model could be treated as the best suited because of its very high-performance level. The degree of hydrological alteration is identified very high in the post-hydrological alteration (PHA) (post-1992) period and it is likely to be intensified predicted period. The estimated environmental flow state in PHA falls under moderate to critically modified states but if alteration goes on in this way ecological deficit will be the obvious result. For the survival of the river estimated environmental flow could be released primarily. Image 1 • The periodicity analyses for annual and seasonal flow were performed using wavelet. • The flow has been forecasted for 13 years using machine-learning methods. • The hydrological alteration has been estimated. • The present and future environmental flow has been estimated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]