Causes and Consequence of Hill Cutting: A Case Study on Chittagong City, Bangladesh

Abstract

The Chittagong city of Bangladesh is enriched with the natural beauty as well as with combination of natural resources like hills, forests, rivers and the sea. Especially the hilly landscapes of the city area made it one of the most beautiful cities of the world. For these reasons once the city was known as the "queen of the East". Being the Centre of all kinds of international trade and commerce, the city is also considered as the gateway of the East. Population increase is one of the many continuous events that pushed the authority to expand the city area to incorporate the added population. More over huge industrial development and extension of commercial activities are going to pressurize the city to expand the anthropogenic activities. All these kinds of urban phenomenon are directly affecting the city's unique hilly landscape. In the present study, an attempt has been made to find out the consequential scenarios of hill cutting which ultimately contribute to further understanding of land use change. Besides, the study aimed to identify various causes and related factors of hill cutting, its Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) on local environment and urban socioeconomic life of the city habitant. Moreover, the study is focused on the vulnerability of hillock settlers from landslides and finally to check out the causal relationship between hill cutting and its various causes, factors of hill cutting and landslides in the Chittagong City Corporation area. The present study was carried out based on the combination of primary and secondary data. The available secondary sources like books, journals, reports and publications have been discussed intensively to conceive the ideas related to the study. On the other hand, primary data has also been collected and used according to the requirements of the objectives of the research. In the present research, during the period of September 2009 to February 2012, primary data were collected from various ways i.e., direct field observation, survey, three focus group discussions (FGD), 400 questionnaire surveys, seven experts’ opinion survey and three case study analysis. Various maps for the present study were collected from the different local authorities i.e., Chittagong Development Authority (CDA), Chittagong City Corporation (CCC) and CW ASA for diverse purposes and all the collected base maps were digitized and modified using Arc View 3.3 and Arc GIS 9.1 software. The collected primary and secondary data were imputed, coded and analyzed by MS Word, MS Excel and Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) which are presented in the text by tables, charts, graphs, diagrams, figures and photographs etc. to statistical analysis, Person's product moments correlation and Chi-squire (x:) have been used to test the hypothesis concerning the relationship between the independent and dependent variables. Most of the hilly areas are found in the Pahartali, Khushi, Kotowali, Panchlaish and Baizid Bos Tami Thana in the Chittagong City. It is observed from the study that the city has lost a significant number of hills during last four decades. About 86 hills are found which are categorized as, Category-I, Category II and Category III. The first category Hills are retained intact or less vulnerable while the second Category hills are partially vulnerable and the third Category hills are highly vulnerable............