Coping with Disasters in Bangladesh: People's Vulnerability and Survival Strategy

Abstract

A large number of people live in the riverside areas of Bangladesh, which are prone to severe flooding and erosion. A huge amount of colossal damages have been recorded every year due to such natural disasters in those areas. Although there are several studies done on disasters and theirs effects in the context of Bangladesh, these studies are mostly focused on the cyclones and tidal surges in the coastal areas. Scant attention has been given on flood disaster and vulnerabilities and impacts caused by it in the context of plain land and riverside areas of Bangladesh. Moreover, during and after the flood, people of the affected areas usually try to adopt some measures as coping strategies. This aspect is also remained almost unexplored in case of Bangladesh. Therefore, this study has set its objective to explore the vulnerabilities and impacts of flood disaster and analyze the coping strategies people adopt at different phases of flood disaster in the study area. To obtain the objective an extensive field survey on 250 households has been carried out in two villages of Kazipur upazila of Sirajganj district in Bangladesh. It is found that among the different natural hazards, flood with river erosion is the foremost problem to the study people. The study finds that the people of the study area are vulnerable to flood disaster in terms of insecurity feeling about their economic, social, health related and other aspects of their livelihood Reduction of income, crop damage, asset damage, children's education discontinuation, chances of occurring diseases, chances of being displaced etc. are the main areas of vulnerability created by flood disaster. During and after the flood, various types of impacts fall on the people. It is found that in the villages more that 80% households reported to face moderate to severe impacts of immediate past flood It has been seen that flood has devastating impact on people's income, food consumption, health etc. In looking at the impacts offl ood disaster, it is found that a large number of respondents became homeless and displaced The economic losses were also high. The study finds that being vulnerable groups, women and children faced flood impacts more than men. To minimize the flood impacts the respondents were found to adopt many coping strategies at different phases of flood disaster. The study explored 34 major coping strategies of the respondents. They used such strategies mainly to pass the flood days somehow. The strategies they employed are mainly for maintaining the daily food requirements and income insecurities. Food and income security becomes the main concern of coping strategy to the landless and small farmers. While asset damage and crop damage are the main concerns of the medium and large farmers for which they adopt best possible coping strategies. Coping Strategy is influenced by various intra-household and external factors apart from the severity and duration of hazard. Among the intra-household and external factors, pattern of house structure, insufficient food or food insecurity, income and savings, having no effective local flood resistant infrastructures have been seen as dominant factors in deciding and adopting coping strategy in the study area. Relatives, neighbors, GOs and NGOs have been the great helpers to the affected people during flood. There is a need of strengthening the coping capacities of the households towards building a disaster resilient community but there is also a need of minimizing the threat of excessive flood with river erosion. Coping strategies have been their survival strategies as they practice the coping strategies to save themselves for years.