Reducing vulnerability through a better understanding of migration and adaptation in the Ganges delta in Bangladesh

Jon Lawn and Michele Leone in the Dhaka Tribune (Bangladesh): An abundance of scientific evidence shows that the people living in deltas have an increased vulnerability to sea-level rise and effects of climate change. In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that low-latitude and less developed areas generally face greater risk, for example in dry areas and mega-deltas. These risks increase vulnerability of specific groups such as the poor.

The poor and vulnerable have migrated in different forms to cope with the disruptions climatic changes has brought upon their lives. Research is crucial to understanding the suitability of migration as an adaptation option to the threats of climate change, and the implications migration has on society and the environment. There is a new project tackling these issues in Bangladesh: a research collaboration between the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) and the University of Southampton in the UK, which is part of a larger initiative studying migration and adaptation across Africa and South Asia.

The “Deltas, vulnerability and Climate Change: Migration and Adaptation” (DECCMA) project is a five-year long program of applied research which started in early 2014, focusing on the potential and limits of adaptation options in deltaic environments.  The project will analyse the impacts of climate change and changes in other environmental  pressures (such as demand for agriculture or damming rivers) across three contrasting deltas: The Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna in both Bangladesh and West Bengal, the Mahanadi delta in India, and the Volta delta in Ghana. The University of Southampton provides the overall leadon the project, partnering with BUET, Jadavpur University in Kolkata, India and the University of Ghana, who lead research in the delta study sites.

We aim to understand the effectiveness of adaptation options for individuals and communities in the coastal zone of the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta, whilst also evaluating the potential for migration to be an active and positive response to climate change. Ultimately, the project team anticipates that the uptake of a robust scientific evidence base for decision-makers and practitioners will lead to improved livelihoods and reductions in poverty in delta regions....

An outline map of the Ganges Delta by John Oldale, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Bangladesh announces nationwide use of SERVIR satellite-based flood forecasting and warning system

A press release from NASA: Bangladesh officials have announced plans to expand a satellite-based flood forecasting and warning system developed by SERVIR to aid an area where floodwaters inundate from 1/3 to 2/3 of the country annually, killing hundreds of people and affecting millions. The system, which relies on river level data provided by the Jason-2 satellite, last year provided the longest lead time for flood warnings ever produced in Bangladesh.

SERVIR is a joint development initiative of NASA and USAID, working in partnership with leading regional organizations around the globe to help developing countries use information provided by Earth Observing satellites and geospatial technologies for managing climate risks and land use. SERVIR and the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development based in Kathmandu, Nepal, developed the Jason-2 based flood forecasting and warning solution.

"Forecasters have the dream to extend lead time for flood warnings," said Amirul Hossain, executive engineer for the Bangladesh Water Development Board. "By using Jason-2 near real-time data, we made a real step forward in the flood forecasting system in Bangladesh."

About 80 million people depend on the BWDB Flood Forecasting and Warning Center flood warnings. This organization has progressively built and expanded its flood forecasting system. However, without data from Jason-2, warnings were issued just three to five days in advance of flooding. During the 2014 monsoon season, the FFWC used the new Jason-2 solution experimentally and was able to forecast flooding eight days in advance at nine locations of the Ganges and Brahmaputra River Basins in the north, northwest, and central part of the country.

..."We hope this is the beginning of a new journey, a new era for further development of the flood early warning system using space data or space technology,” said Hossain. “In the coming year, with support provided by the NASA SERVIR team, we would like to expand the system to many other locations where possible, to enable more people to benefit from this system by receiving more extended lead time for flood forecasts."...

Upper row: The Ganges Brahmaputra Meghna (GBM) river basins and the Ganges-Brahmaputra (GB) delta. Bottom row: The many river deltas (shown as a triangle in each region) located in large remote river basins that lack information for modeling rivers and water management. Image Credit: NASA SERVIR

En route to climate change adaptation

Ayesha Qaisrani in Pakistan Today: With no adherence to geographical boundaries, climate change continues to hover over our heads like a dense, dark cloud of uncertainty. Even with all the sophisticated projections of climate change, only one thing about it remains certain: that it is happening and we better act now.

Realising the gravity of the situation, Climate Action Network South Asia (CANSA) in collaboration with Janathakshan and Asia Pacific Adaptation Network (APAN), organised a sub-regional workshop for the South Asian nations in Colombo, Sri Lanka, to discuss the latest adaptation initiatives taken up and exchange best practices and information. The workshop took place on the 23rd and 24th of February 2015 and was attended by representatives of Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Bhutan and Nepal including representation from the respective governments, the parliaments and the civil society.

...It was encouraging to get insights about the adaptation initiatives being taken up by the nations of South Asia. Even more encouraging was the general recognition of the need of cooperation and collaboration among the nations for an effective response to climate change. Emphasising on the need of regional cooperation, Mr Malik Muhammad Uzair Khan, Member Parliament, Pakistan, commented, “Pakistan like India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh is reeling under the worst impacts of climate change. Clearly, climate change knows no borders and now more than ever it is critical that our leaders come together to share best practices for climate change adaptation and set the region on the path of sustainable development.”

Underlining that capacity building is the keystone to effective adaptation to climate change. The representatives advocated a balanced investment in physical infrastructure and skills of the population. They stressed upon focusing on education and awareness, health, agriculture sector, water management and disaster preparedness to increase the resilience of people and reduce their vulnerability. Besides individual and community level, focus should also be directed at institutional capacity building as, quite often, it is the institutions that are inefficient in setting their priorities for strategic response to climate change....

NASA image of 2010 flooding in Pakistan

Micro loans can offset effects of climate change

The Daily Star (Bangladesh): Microfinance institutions should modify their financial products for those at vulnerable climate zones to deal with global warming, a keynote speaker at a climate change seminar said yesterday.

The MFIs offer three types of products: loans, savings and insurance. Each product can be modified depending on the type of shock the MFI customers might be suffering from, said Fazle Rabbi Sadeque Ahmed, coordinator of Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation's Community Climate Change Project.

For instance, in areas that are becoming more prone to flooding, MFIs can encourage: aquaculture initiatives among farmers, floating gardens, investment on raised tube wells for safe water and new houses to be built on raised beds or raised embankments.

All these measures can be supported by making use of loans, savings and insurance products that include a set of climate sensitive conditions, he said.

Ahmed's comments came at the inaugural session of a daylong seminar styled 'climate change adaptation at community level: the role of MFIs', jointly organised by the Institute of Microfinance and Bangladesh Water Partnership. The event was aimed at identifying the bankable projects and overcoming the challenges at village level in implementing climate change resilience through microcredit....

Bangladesh floods test disaster response improvements

IRIN: Floods triggered by two weeks of intense rain have affected two million people in northern Bangladesh and left up to half a million homeless. While the country’s disaster response capacity has been enhanced in recent years, experts argue that with people displaced and crops destroyed the flooding is testing response mechanisms.

"Improvement has been made in regard to flood forecasting system but there is still lack of coordination among government agencies," Mahbuba Nasreen, director of the Institute of Disaster Management and Vulnerability Studies at Dhaka University, told IRIN.

A 31 August situation report by the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief said 17 of the country’s 64 districts have been affected. Six of these districts are expected to experience rising water levels this week, and Dhaka, the capital and home to 15 million people, may see flooding as well. NGOs estimate that the floods have left 500,000 homeless and, according to the UN World Food Programme (WFP), “others, who have nowhere else to go, have remained in their flooded homes.”

Nasreen explained that part of the remaining weakness is due to Bangladesh’s Water Development Board being responsible for building and repairing embankments, which protect against floods, while the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief is responsible for reacting to disasters. This, she argued, results in lack of coordination between the two agencies. "One organization should look after the whole thing," she said. "There are still lots of things to do to improve [the] country's disaster response."...

Bangladesh floods leave thousands homeless, damage crops

Reuters: Heavy flooding across Bangladesh has forced thousands of people from their homes and caused severe damage to crops, with officials on Tuesday warning the situation could worsen as floodwaters poured into the capital, Dhaka.

Heavy monsoon rain in recent days has aggravated the situation in the low-lying and densely populated country, with the wet season due to run into September. "Over the next couple of days the flood situation around Dhaka ... might further deteriorate," said Sazzad Hussain, an engineer at the Flood Forecasting and Warning Center in the capital.

People in low-lying areas next to the rivers in Dhaka would likely be affected, he added. An official at the disaster management control room said the floods have affected more than 74,000 people and the number of homeless ran into several thousands, but she gave no official figure....

Staving off disasters together

Nicola Banwell in the Dhaka Tribune (Bangladesh): Collaboration between the public and private sectors, also known as Public Private Partnerships (PPPs), can create an enabling environment for community resilience and disaster risk reduction. Public private partnerships involve harnessing investment, expertise, and innovation from the private sector for better public infrastructure – including both physical infrastructure (as in roads, railways, etc) and social infrastructure (such as hospitals, schools, and health services).

Small and medium enterprise (SMEs) and other private sector investment is a key strategy in sustainable development financing in the emerging post-2015 development agenda as well.

There is great scope for harnessing private sector strengths and expertise in disaster risk reduction as PPPs increase access to technical expertise and knowledge, as well as resources and innovative solutions. Mainstreaming disaster risk reduction in the private sector can create ample opportunities for the development of innovative technology, and steer public demand and consumers toward disaster resilient materials, solutions, and technology.

Furthermore, because of the private sector’s direct relationship with consumers, producers, and those in the supply chain, private sector investment has the potential to reach a wide range of individuals, communities, and enterprises.

Disaster losses undermine business performance and sustainability, while simultaneously resulting in widespread loss to populations in terms of life, livelihood, and infrastructure. For these reasons, PPPs are of mutual benefit to both parties.

For example, the safety and resiliency of communities can be promoted by the private sector through investment in disaster risk reduction, quality assurance, and standard setting in urban structures, and the development of resilient power and water infrastructure. At the same time these investments also protect their own business continuity, as it enables the private sector to provide their goods and services reliably, with reduced interruption. Further to this, in the event of a disaster, the reliable provision of goods and services allows the community access to vital goods and services....

Fishing in a flooded field in Bangladesh, shot by Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Bangladesh and climate change: time to change the narrative?

Saleemul Huq in Responding to Climate Change: By now Bangladesh has become known as being one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change. This refrain is now repeated endlessly by our leaders and representatives when talking about Bangladesh and climate change. It is also the way the international media sees Bangladesh.

...While this story is undoubtedly true, it is no longer the only story about climate change and Bangladesh. I would argue that it is by now an out of date story and that a new narrative of Bangladesh being at the forefront of tackling the adverse impacts of climate change is indeed the more important narrative for us to propagate from now on.

In scientific and development discourse the vulnerability of countries, communities and systems to the adverse impacts of climate change are often used as the obverse of resilience to those adverse impacts. In other words, countries and communities that have high vulnerability are generally deemed to also have low resilience while building up resilience is seen as reducing vulnerability. So vulnerability and resilience are seen like a see-saw where high vulnerability equals low resilience and low vulnerability equals high resilience.

I would argue that while this may be true in many cases, Bangladesh is the exception to this rule. In other words, Bangladesh is both highly vulnerable to the physical impacts of climate change but at the same time the people are highly resilient to facing all kinds of adversity, including climatic ones. Indeed, one could argue that Bangladeshis are more resilient than even many developed countries....

US Navy photo of Bangladesh after Cyclone Sidr, 2007

Bangladesh to slash its own climate adaptation fund

Syful Islam at the Thomson Reuters Foundation: Bangladesh plans to cut spending from its own budget on climate change adaptation and rely more in the future on funds from donors, government officials said.

The low-lying South Asian nation, considered one of the countries most at risk from climate impacts such as sea level rise, worsening erosion and erratic rainfall, has been a leader in the developing world in committing its own funds to climate adaptation. Officials allocated $320 million from the country’s budget over five years to a domestic climate adaptation fund, said Finance Minister A.M.A. Muhith in a budget speech to parliament.

But “this allocation will be reduced in the future and instead steps will be taken to increase (funding to) the Bangladesh Climate Change Resilience Fund, established with the assistance of our development partners,” Muhith said in a June 5 speech. That fund has so far received $187 million from international donors, with some of the money going to adaptation projects.

The minister proposed no new funding for the Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Fund (BCCTF), the country’s own adaptation funding initiative, in the next budget. The change comes as part of an update to the Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan of 2009.

Critics of the decision said the change in strategy comes in part because of questions raised about the alleged misuse of funds from the country’s adaptation trust fund, and the government’s desire to avoid further controversy in the future. Last October, the Bangladesh chapter of Transparency International said it had found evidence of political influence, nepotism and corruption in the way funds were allocated....

A man and a boat in Bangladesh, shot by Balaram Mahalder, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

EU pledges further work on climate ‘resilience’

EurActiv: The EU commissioners dealing with development cooperation and humanitarian aid have pledged more work on “resilience”, defined as the ability of individuals and communities to recover from shocks and stresses. The idea has become more prominent in development discussions in Brussels, as policymakers have searched for ways to mitigate the expected effects of climate change.

Many of the world’s most vulnerable people have been buffered or seen their livelihoods destroyed by extreme weather events, such a typhoon in the Philippines last year, Haiyan, and severe flooding in Bangladesh.

Kristalina Georgieva, the commissioner for humanitarian aid and crisis response, said at the EU’s first forum on resilience, on Monday (28 April), that the concept was “nothing new”, as it referred to “coping mechanisms people have to create themselves”.

The commissioner said that while the worst of the crisis received considerable media attention, the “success of resilience” was “a difficult story to tell”. She added that people in Bangladesh had switched from chickens to rearing ducks, as a way to cope with the floods....

European flag outside EC headquarters, shot by Xavier Häpe, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

New-concept flood insurance could help Bangladesh's poor

IRIN: A new insurance scheme in which pre-determined flood thresholds trigger speedy compensation offers hope for poor people in flood-prone Bangladesh, experts say. “Floods adversely impact the ability of the poor to earn a livelihood both by destroying assets and limiting opportunities for labour,” said Snehal Soneji, Oxfam International’s Bangladesh country director.

“This [insurance] product is index-based and operates at the meso-level, which means that payout is triggered on the basis of a certain threshold being reached resulting in immediate payout without the long process of surveying and then payout,” he explained, referring to traditional insurance schemes that rely on time-consuming damage assessment surveys to determine compensation.

According to a 2012 article in the journal Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, “index insurance indemnifies the insured based on the observed value of a specified `index’ or some other closely related variable… [and] the most widely used index in index insurance contract designs is rainfall.”

A 2013 scoping report by the Malaysia-based research organization World Fish and a consortium of environment and agricultural agencies argued: “With current and anticipated increases in magnitude of extreme weather events and a declining consistency in weather patterns…there has been a growing interest in weather index-based insurance schemes in Bangladesh.”

Norul Amin, economic and private sector coordinator at Oxfam-Bangladesh, told IRIN: “There is strong demand for financial disaster recovery mechanisms, not only among the poor communities, but also insurance sector, donor agencies, micro-finance institutes and government officials.”...

In 2007, an aerial view over southern Bangladesh reveals extensive flooding as a result of Cyclone Sidr. US Marine Corps photo by Staff Sgt. Julius Hawkins (RELEASED)

PM Hasina of Bangladesh for upgrading disaster mitigation system

The Daily Star (Bangladesh): Stressing upgrading the traditional early warning and disaster mitigation system, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Sunday said that international cooperation for exchange of weather data and information is very important for worldwide disaster management.

“Since meteorological phenomena do not obey political or geographical boundaries, international cooperation for exchange of weather data and information throughout the globe is essential for worldwide disaster management,” she said.

“We’ve to ensure proper application of latest technology with our conventional system for upgrading our existing early warning and mitigation activities,” Hasina said, inaugurating the 41st session of WMO/ESCAP Panel on Tropical Cyclones for the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea.

Defence Secretary Khondoker M Asaduzzaman delivered the address of welcome at the inaugural ceremony held at the International Conference Center of the Prime Minister's Office in the morning. Director of Bangladesh Metrological Department Md Shah Alam gave the vote of thanks....

Bangladesh teaches disaster preparedness to reduce risk

IRIN: Bangladesh is working to enhance children’s understanding of disaster preparedness with the introduction of 10 new supplementary books for teaching the subject, which has been part of the education curriculum in primary and secondary schools since 2004.

“With these books, students will be taught about disaster… [preparedness] by rhymes and stories, so that they can understand the risks,” Shafikur Rahman, chairman of the National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB), told IRIN.

In the Bangladesh 2010 National Education Policy disaster preparedness is cited as a core area to be incorporated into the curriculum, “to build students as skilled human resources to fight the challenges of the world threatened by climate change and other natural disasters, and to create in them a social awareness about environment." The Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre lists this low-lying nation of 155 million people as one of the most disaster-prone states in the world, with cyclones entering the Bay of Bengal and making landfall along the Bangladesh coast almost every year.

More than two-thirds of the country’s 64 districts are prone to natural disasters, including cyclones, floods, landslides, tornadoes and drought. The Comprehensive Disaster Management Programme (CDMP) of the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief is providing financial and technical support to incorporate disaster preparedness in the Bangladesh school curriculum....
Rural Bangladesh children, shot by Mark Knobil , Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Char people in Bangladesh wetlands adapt to climate change impact

Dhaka Tribune: Thousands of distressed women have successfully adapted them with adverse impacts of climate change in remote char [wetland] villages after struggling with natural disasters and abject poverty for decades together.

Side by side adapting with adverse situations in the riverine island chars on the Brahmaputra basin, they have achieved socioeconomic success to lead better life with their family members through various income-generating activities, reports BSS.

All these became possible following successful implementation of the comprehensive Chars Livelihoods Programme (CLP) aiming at improving life standard of the extremely poor people living in the char areas since 2004. Under the programme, thousands of the have-nots group landless families have adapted with adverse situations to achieve self-reliance bidding good-bye to the century-old seasonal ‘monga’ during the past nine years.

The UKaid through the Department for International Development and Australian Government through Australian Agency for International Development have been funding implementation of the programme. Under the sponsorship of the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives, CLP is being executed by the Rural Development and Cooperatives Division with the management through Maxwell Stamp Plc.

According to official sources, the CLP has been working with the extremely poor households living on the riverine island chars to improve their livelihoods through raising plinths and providing assets and other assistances....

Erosion on the Padma River in Bangladesh, shot by Afzal Hossain Noman: The copyright holder of this file allows anyone to use it for any purpose, provided that the copyright holder is properly attributed. Redistribution, derivative work, commercial use, and all other use is permitted

Bangladesh ailing four years after Aila

Robert Stefanicki in IPS News: It has been four years since Cyclone Aila struck Bangladesh, triggering floods and widespread destruction. But the villagers of Koira subdistrict, among the worst affected of the 11 districts hit by the cyclone, are yet to recover from its impact. The Jaman family was among the 41,043 families in Koira affected by Aila. Like most of their neighbours, they remained homeless for eight months, surviving on supplies from humanitarian organisations.

Some 23,820 houses were totally damaged in Koira. When the waters receded, the government gave them 20,000 taka (260 dollars) each to build a new house..... But the family has no illusions; they know the next cyclone, which will hit them sooner or later from the Bay of Bengal 20 km away, will blow their new dwellings away again. Only the brick houses of the rich will survive.

But that is not their immediate concern. More worrying is the lack of a stable income. The Jamans are among the 40 percent of Bangladesh’s 155 million people who live below the poverty line. Before, it was a hand-to-mouth existence, but they never went hungry. Koira being an agricultural region, people could make a living off the land; the landless were employed by the farmers. In times of crisis, the poor could count on help from their more affluent neighbours.

Aila changed all that. Not only were 502 acres of crops destroyed in Koira, according to the damage summary by the local UNO office, but the cyclone left the fields waterlogged for three years. Now, since the water has receded, the soil has become salinated, allowing nothing to grow. The newly pauperised rich therefore are no longer willing to share with their neighbours. Nor do they employ them in their barren fields any more....

A father and son in the Sundarbans in Bangladesh in 2009, after Cyclone Aila, shot by Koustav2007, public domain

Loss and damage from climate change

Science Daily: An open access special issue of the International Journal of Global Warming brings together, for the first time, empirical evidence of loss and damage from the perspective of affected people in nine vulnerable countries. The articles in this special issue show how climatic stressors affect communities, what measures households take to prevent loss and damage, and what the consequences are when they are unable to adjust sufficiently. The guest-editors, Kees van der Geest and Koko Warner of the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) in Bonn, Germany, introduce the special issue with an overview of key findings from the nine research papers, all of which are available online free of charge.

'Loss and damage' refers to adverse effects of climate variability and climate change that occur despite mitigation and adaptation efforts. Warner and van der Geest discuss the loss and damage incurred by people at the local-level based on evidence from research teams working in nine vulnerable countries: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Kenya, Micronesia, Mozambique and Nepal. The research papers pool data from 3269 household surveys and more than 200 focus groups and expert interviews.

The research reveals four loss and damage pathways. Residual impacts of climate stressors occur when:

• existing coping/adaptation to biophysical impact is not enough;
• measures have costs (including non-economic) that cannot be regained;
• despite short-term merits, measures have negative effects in the longer term; or
• no measures are adopted -- or possible -- at all.

The articles in this special issue provide evidence that loss and damage happens simultaneously with efforts by people to adjust to climatic stressors. The evidence illustrates loss and damage around barriers and limits to adaptation: growing food and livelihood insecurity, unreliable water supplies, deteriorating human welfare and increasing manifestation of erosive coping measures (e.g. eating less, distress sale of productive assets to buy food, reducing the years of schooling for children, etc.). These negative impacts touch upon people's welfare and health, social cohesion, culture and identity -- values that contribute to the functioning of society but which elude monetary valuation....

Turner's 1805 painting, "The Shipwreck"

Adapting to climate change in Bangladesh

Naimul Haq has a video over at SciDev.net: Natural disasters — particularly tropical cyclones, tornadoes, storm surges and flooding — occur frequently in Bangladesh. With changing weather patterns, these disasters are predicted to become both more frequent and more intense.

...Earlier this year, Cyclone Mohasen hit Bangladesh, forcing thousands of people into emergency accommodation, causing flooding and crop devastation, and destroying many coastal homes and roads.

But, because of the efforts of the government, NGOs and international development partners, better cyclone preparations meant far fewer people died than in previous years....

Bangladeshis lead in climate adaptation

The Daily Star (Bangladesh): A BBC survey across seven Asian countries finds 84 percent of Bangladeshi respondents are feeling the impact of climate change on their household income. Almost one-third of the respondents are experiencing extreme weather events, changing livelihoods, and migrating to cities for work and struggling to cope.

However, people here are better at adapting to climate change than those in the other countries surveyed. They are already making changes to their livelihoods, including migrating for work or growing different crops, the survey says.

“Bangladeshis are feeling the effects of complex changes in their environment. However, we have found that communities are already doing a lot to cope with the situation and are keen to do more,” said Charlotte Imbert, country director in Bangladesh for BBC Media Action, at the launch of the study report in Dhaka yesterday.

As part of Climate Asia, a BBC Media Action initiative, 33,500 people were surveyed in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal, China, Indonesia and Vietnam to know people’s daily experience on climate change. This is the largest climate survey in Asia, claims Media Action (formerly BBC World Service Trust), BBC’s charity for international development...

Setting Bangladesh on a new path towards disaster resilience

Pauline Tamesis in the Dhaka Tribune: Bangladesh’s ability to manage disasters has improved dramatically since the devastating impacts of the cyclone at Bhola in 1970 which saw more than half a million people perish in a single night, or even cyclone Gorky which killed 138,000 people in 1991.

Since the early nineties, when an onslaught of extreme weather events prompted the country to invest heavily in cyclone shelters and flood embankments, it has emerged as an innovator and global leader in disaster management. Between 1980 and 2007 when the most recent devastating cyclone made landfall, Bangladesh experienced more than 200 extreme weather events. Those early investments played a critical role in drastically reducing death tolls and damages from these floods, cyclones and droughts.

This reduction happened because Bangladesh replaced its reactive approach to disasters, which focused on relief but allowed long term vulnerabilities to persist, with a proactive stance that sought to reduce risks posed by extreme weather events.

What emerged, through a long partnership between the government and the development partners including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), has been recognised as a gold-standard disaster management apparatus and a paradigm shift in policy towards coordinated preparedness.

From research and development on drought and flood-resistant crops to early warning systems that have drastically reduced the human costs of disasters, the world has a lot to learn from the Bangladeshi experience. The government of Bangladesh has shared important lessons on disaster management with countries as diverse as Sri Lanka and the Gambia...

An aerial view of the damage from Cyclone Sidr in 2007, US Marine Corps photo

Bangladesh: Reconstructing now for better prevention in the future

Terre des hommes: Two months after the passing of Tropical Storm Mahasen, which affected more than 500,000 people, and the implementation of an initial emergency phase, Terre des hommes is assisting nearly 20,000 victims to recover from the consequences they suffered and to become more resistant to the future effects of cyclones and flooding.

On 16 May 2013, a deluge of water battered the coasts of Bangladesh, causing the worst to be feared for those affected. Although initially all of the reports happily referred to a relatively low number of casualties, the gravity of the situation soon become clear. Ninety percent of those affected had lost their means of livelihood, consisting mainly of subsistence agricultural and fishing. More than 80% of them no longer had access to clean drinking water or toilet facilities, generating fears that health problems would increase tremendously.

Terre des hommes, present in the region since 2007, immediately launched an emergency aid programme, which focused on the distribution of emergency materials (drinking water, food and basic goods) and medical assistance for the most vulnerable (pregnant and nursing women and children under five). Today, the teams on the ground are working to provide longer-term rehabilitation and to reduce the risks related to new catastrophes.

In concrete terms, 2,400 families who are among the most vulnerable are receiving food aid, which will enable them to overcome the loss of this year’s harvest. Also, 169 community reservoirs are being repaired, and five anti-cyclone emergency shelters are now equipped with a system to collect and distribute water. A total of nearly 20,000 people will be able to recover more quickly from the consequences of Tropical Storm Mahasen and will be better prepared to face future disasters.

This type of risk prevention is fundamental in a country like Bangladesh, which suffers regularly from natural disasters. Terre des hommes also carries out consistent efforts aimed at reducing the effects of disasters on the local population. A little help goes a long way. For example, within the framework of a pilot project, Keyhole gardens were set up to protect the vegetables being grown from flooding. Ninety percent of them survived the passing of Mahasen, thus proving the effectiveness of an innovative system, which is easy to build and inexpensive to implement. A glimmer of hope for the future.

Tropical Storm Mahasen making landfall in Bangladesh on May 16, 2013. Image by NASA