Abstract
Given the year on year decrease of rural farmland and various forms of land degradation through the intrusion of non-farm land uses, the government of Bangladesh has drafted the agrarian reform strategies, primarily to protect the agricultural land from encroachment, conversion, and indiscriminate use. The draft Agricultural Land Protection and Land Use Bill since its inception in 2011 is facing serious uncertainties of implementation due to its borrowed nature from the developed contexts and inadequacy to recognize the local complexities. With a particular focus on the densification component of the draft bill, a semester-long design studio was conducted in consultation with the existing villagers to explore the practicability of the draft bill in the villages of Tetultala and Chhoygharia in the south-western coastal Bangladesh. The findings from the two villages hint that in Bangladesh, the unique and evolving nature of rural settlements dynamics that are disintegrating the rural society from farming practices and the farmland, thereby, unsettling the traditional village-morphology. The settlements dynamics vary from those of the western context; hence, there is an emerging need to build locally situated knowledge towards a feasible rural land reform.
Highlights
The rural farmland is in continuous decay as the unique and vernacular human-land interaction of Southeast Asia is contested through urbanization and related development aggravations
Bangladesh is no exception with two-third of the populations lived in villages in 2014 (FAO 2015). 41.54 % of the economically active population is engaged in agriculture contributing 20 % to the country’s total GDP
As the unplanned encroachment of rural land seems to have arrived at crossroads, recently, concerns have been raised to ensure the region’s food security and for the sustenance of agricultural practices of the large rural demography in retaining the traditional village morphology
Summary
The rural farmland is in continuous decay as the unique and vernacular human-land interaction of Southeast Asia (the predominantly rural continent of the last century) is contested through urbanization and related development aggravations. Densification of the rural non-farm settlements in order to protect agricultural land was made explicit throughout the draft document.
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