Methane released by farming — mainly from flooded rice paddies and livestock — reached a peak of 53.1 million tonnes of CO₂-equivalent in 2022, up from 38.4 million in 1990. By 2024 it had dropped to 47.4 million, an 11% fall in two years.
21%
Share of Bangladesh’s total greenhouse gas emissions (excluding land use) that came from agricultural methane in 2024, down from 51% in 1990.
The share has fallen mainly because other emissions grew much faster: total emissions rose from 74.9 to 220.8 million tonnes over the same period, so agriculture’s slice shrank even as its absolute emissions grew by about a quarter between 1990 and 2024.
Methane traps far more heat than carbon dioxide over its first decades in the atmosphere, so cutting it is one of the quickest ways to slow warming. For a country whose staple food is rice, that points to practices such as alternate wetting and drying of paddies, which reduce the time fields stay flooded.
One caveat: these are modelled estimates from the EDGAR database, not direct measurements, and the data does not say why emissions dipped after 2022. Whether it reflects changes in farming practice, the area planted or revisions in the underlying statistics should be checked before drawing policy conclusions.
Source: EDGAR (Joint Research Centre, European Commission), via World Bank WDI (EN.GHG.CH4.AG.MT.CE.AR5 and EN.GHG.ALL.MT.CE.AR5).