Tidal river management for sustainable agriculture in the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta: Implication for land use policy

•Tidal river management (TRM) approach is an indigenous practice for coastal management in the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta.•This approach has a high potential for sustainable agricultural production.•We assess the benefits of TRM operation for the first time.•We apply innovative approaches for with- and without- TRM scenarios.•The financial benefit from agriculture by TRM operation was 7.97 billion BDT for the studied catchment.•The results are useful for promoting sustainable land use planning in the area. The tidal river management (TRM) approach is an indigenous management practice in the Southwest part of the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta in Bangladesh. This approach has a high potential for extending area under agriculture with a positive impact on sustainable production and consequently on sustainable land use planning. Until recently, no studies provide a quantitative assessment on agricultural benefits of TRM operation. In this study, we aim to assess the benefits of TRM operation by using innovative approaches such as comparing land use change, agricultural production and economic cost-benefit analysis for two scenarios (with and without TRM) in the Hari-Teka-Bhadra catchment. We found that the financial benefit of TRM operation was 85.5 million US dollar per year from the agriculture sector. The results are useful for promoting land use policy through TRM approach in achieving greater sustainability in the area.