The Bangladesh Floods: Causes, Solutions and Coping Strategies
19 November, 1998, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).
Sue Chowdhury
Health and Nutrition Coordinator, Emergencies Depatment,
OXFAM.
Ross Hughes
Research Associate,
International Institute for Environment and Development
(IIED),London.
Discussants:
Naila Kabeer, IDS Sussex,
and Mushtaq Khan, SOAS.Chair:
Sara Hossain
Haris Gazdar and Ramya Subrahmanian
Context
The idea for this meeting arose a few weeks
ago at the height of the media coverage of the floods in Bangladesh.
Many of us felt that there was a dearth of hard technical information about
the causes of what was
happening, its full impact and consequences.
What does the future hold for Bangladesh? Is the country, as
some commentators have said, cascading into the Bay of Bengal? Also,
there is a need to come together and address the social, political
and economic factors at work. Sue Chowdhary knows Bangladesh
well, has lived and worked there, and has been involved in organising Oxfam's
relief efforts. Ross Hughes has been involved in IIED's
work on the Flood Action Plan.
Background
Sue Chowdhary, Oxfam
I will speak about this year's floods, what I saw of them, and what we learnt from Oxfam's work there. Firstly its useful to start with some basic statistics about Bangladesh. The country is the same size as England and Wales put together, and has an estimated population of 127 million. 63% of the workforce are in agriculture, and according to UN figures, over 50% of the people live below the poverty line of 2250 kcal/day.
The geography is dominated by rivers; the Yamuna also known as the Brahmaputra, and the Ganges, known locally as Bodha Ganga. The rivers drain an area which is 12 times the size of Bangladesh.
Every year, one-third of the total area of
the country gets inundated. This is normal and good for the economy
and people. This year over 50% was inundated. This was
the same as the peak in 1988, which was the previous high flood.
This year the floods took longer; came earlier and subsided late.
They started in late June and remained till the end of September.
For 67 days the water remained above the danger level. There were
3 peaks: in late July, mid-August and in early September. Every
time people thought that the floods had subsided and return to the
lands and started planting crops, only to
have to leave again.
Causes: Much higher than average rainfall in catchment area; earthquake in the sea-bed of the Bay of Bengal prevented quick drainage into the sea.
Many of the observations in this talk are based on a visit to the "Char" areas of Bangladesh over the summer. In this riverine area, people are very poor, there is frequent erosion of land, and a kind of shifting cultivation is practiced as land is eroded through floods and new land emerged from silt deposits. Instability, vulnerability and insecurity are built into the economy and environment and livelihoods.
The impact of the floods was several-fold. Firstly, there was the problem of displacement. People tended to hold on to where they were for as long as was possible. They stayed even when their houses got flooded. They placed bricks under their beds and the little furniture they possessed. As the water level rose, this was not enough. Then, they would suspend the cots from the ceiling using ropes in order to stay dry. Even when people moved to dry ground, they chose spots from which they could watch their homes. Most people don't own boats. The main form of transport were rafts lashed together with trunks of banana trees. These rafts would typically last for ten days or so.
Secondly, dry and higher ground became very crowded. There was highly increased health risk. Wells became submerged; normal sources of drinking water became unsafe. There were also sanitary problems. People were wading in the water for so long that their feet became soft and became vulnerable to injury and infection due to grazing.
Skin infections such as scabies became a serious health problem. The other serious health problem was diarrhea, especially among young children.
People faced enormous indignities with great fortitude. There was little or no privacy for people to go to latrine. This was especially a serious problem for women.
I witnessed many instances of people trying to cope with life under such difficult conditions. The one story that sticks in my mind is that of a young child who had died and since there was no dry ground to bury the body, had to be buried under the kitchen floor.
The dignity and the courage of the people was inspiring. There was a constant quest for survival strategies. People took to fishing in a big way since the one thing the floods did was to increase the supply of fish. In fact, there was such a large increase in fishing that fish prices fell by a third.
People dismantled their houses for use in building rafts etc. Plastic sheeting commonly used as building material became the most valuable item people possessed. They took bamboo matting from homes to the place of refuge.
The understanding that people had of the connection between unsafe drinking water and infectious diseases, especially diarrhoea, was much higher than ever before. Compared to similar disasters in the early 1970s and 1980s, when such understanding was very poor, and also compared with neighbouring Assam which also suffered floods this year, the 1998 floods in Bangladesh were marked with much greater awareness about water hygeine. This was due to efforts by the governments, as well as NGOs and development agencies to educated people about water safety, the use of ORS [oral rehydration solution], chlorine and alum. Without this education, there would have been a much greater epidemic of diarrhoea. It is early to say, but the indications are that an epidemic was indeed prevented, and really disastrous mortality increases averted.
Dhaka, a city of 9-10 million people did not suffer as badly from the floods this year as it had done in 1988, the last great flood. This year only the eastern part of the city was flooded, while in 1988 much of the city, including many middle class localities were under water. The relatively good protection of Dhaka was due, partly, to a new western embankment. Up to 1.5 million people were affected in Dhaka. Many of them left their homes to shelter with relatives. Many others went to public buildings such as schools etc, and stayed there for two months or more. Many under-construction buildings were taken over by squatters in large numbers.
There were highly varied stories about how people coped in these various shelters. There were cases where some 200 hundred families were camped in a school premises, and sharing the use of one set of school latrines, and managed to keep the place very clean. Where charismatic persons emerged as leaders -- e.g. school teachers, other activists etc. -- things worked well. In other cases the situation was appalling.
When the water finally subsided in the second half of September there were a few days of real crisis. The water couldn't drain because of a mass of plastic bags clogging up the drains. The mayor of Dhaka announced an initiative whereby one Kg of wheat flour was exchanged for every 5 kg of plastic bags brought in. This was a great success.
Overall, the positive thing that could be said, is that there was remarkable awareness of health risks. On the other hand, there was a lot more that could have been done yet to prevent infection, diarrhoea etc. Newspapers played an important part in highlighting what was going on, though many daily reports of the numbers of casualties etc. ought to be taken with a pinch of salt. It was estimated that the total direct mortality due to floods was around 1,000 people. This appears to be extremely low, and the method of calculation is not clear.
Furthermore, there are likely to be longer term effects. So far there is no proper study of the impact on overall health, mortality, economic conditions etc. FAO (Food and Agricultural Organisation, UN) has estimated a deficit of 2.2 million metric tonnes of paddy. This amounts to around 7 per cent of the average annual output of around 28 million tonnes. The situation varies enormously from one region to the next, with some regions having an esitmated deficit of 25% or more.
Many families in the Char areas lost everything. Entire villages were swept away by erosion. New land will appear elsewhere, but the people who lost their homes and their land will not necessarily be compensated.
The floods bring both sand and silt. Silt is good for cultivation, while sand makes the land barren. Under normal flooding the main deposit is silt, but in the extraordinarily severe floods as in 1998, there is a high proportion of sand in the deposit. In many places good land hasbeen ruined due to sand overlays of several feet on top of the fertile silt.
People have been selling their assets in order to finance consumption needs. They sell whatever they have, try to borrow even at high interest rates, and have lost assets in the floods. There are still problems with communication and transport in many areas. Many of the roads in the interior have not been restored. Market access is a problem, as is communication in general.
Background
Ross Hughes, IIED
The IIED has been involved with studies of the bio-physical context of floods in Bangladesh. There was a major study in 1993 which undertook a review of the Flood Action Plan (FAP).
Structure of the presentation:
1. Geographic context
2. Nature of floods
3. The Flood Action Plan
4. Social-environmental implications
5. The way forward
1. Geographical Context
Bangladesh makes up only 7-8% of the total catchment area, and therefore, can have very little control over policies that affect the flood situation. It has to be done at a sub-regional level, and involves cooperation between several states, and regions within states.
Historically, the Brahmaputra (known in Bangladesh as Jamuna) is moving westwards. It gives rise to sand islands or the Chars area, where land appears and disappears over time. This is the area most vulnerable to floods. Most of Bangladesh is made up of very low lying active delta.
Floods are a basic feature of Bangladesh's geography. They are necessary for agriculture. In an average year, 30% of the country is flooded. Flooding is important for the sustenance of fishery. Fish provide 80% of the animal protein on average in Bangladesh. Flooding is also essential for agricultural production, as floods recharge the aquifers. This is all the more important nowadays since the large increase in groudwater irrigation in the country. Floods also recharge nutrients in the soil by bringing fine silts, contribute to biodiversity, renew common property resources. They are important, therefore, both for land owners as well as landless people.
2. Nature and Causes of Floods
There are four main types of floods, and one myth regarding their main cause.
1. River floods: synchronization between snow-melt
and rains. This happened in 1988.
2. Unusually high rainfall; 1987.
3. Flash floods.
4. Storm surges, cyclones; 1991.
Myth: Himalayan degradation. The common cause of floods projected in the mass media is that deforestation in the Himalayas is the main culprit. There is very little empirical support for this view, and it is probably completely untrue. Most of the research has shown that Himalayan deforestation has very little impact on Bangladesh.
3. Flood Action Plan
1987 and 1988 were two particularly bad flood years in succession. Mdme Mitterand (wife of the then French President) happened to be in Bangladesh at the time of the 1988 floods, and is thought to have been instrumental in placing Bangladesh "flood problem" high on the agenda of the G7 summit which took place soon afterwards. France took the lead in UNDP and a package of proposals was prepared.
The French/UNDP approach was focussed on finding "hard" solutions; i.e. construction of hard embankments in order to prevent floods from affecting populated areas. The USAID pursued a different, "soft" approach. It is interesting that both approaches were sustained by identical data.
In 1989 the World Bank came up with the Action Plan for Flood Control, which became known as the Flood Action Plan. It was made up of a package of proposals for regional development. There was a "feeding frenzy" between donors, consultants and engineering companies. 26 studies were commissioned at the cost of $145 million. The World Bank's claim that this was a "coordinated approach" ought to be taken with a large pinch of salt.
4. Implications
a) After two years of study it became clear that it was infeasible to stop large flooding. The focus, therefore, had to shift from "flood control" to "controlled flooding".
(b) Any civil engineering solution would be vulnerable to erosion over time. The main building material would have to be mud and soft aggregates, by necessity, since hard aggregates are costly and not available in Bangladesh in a massive scale.
(c) Increasing the "setback" distances would simply include larger numbers of people in the flood zone.
(d) If flood barrier were breached for some reason, the impact of the resulting flood would be much more severe than if the intervention had not been made in the first place.
(e) Seismic resilience: the main underlying cause of flooding is tectonic movements, and the fact that the delta is active. No amount of flood barrier can address is fundamental seismic fact.
(f) Drainage problem: putting up large embankments will place obstacles in the natural drainage flows. This would create a reverse flood problem.
Other implications include an estimate 20-40% decline in fisheries, the loss of wetlands biodiversity, and also possibly, increasing polarisation in land ownership.
5. Way forward?
There is now greater willingness to discuss the "soft" approach which says that we need less attention to flood prevention and control, and greater attention to working with floods, flood response, and coping strategies. Oxfam, for example, work at the village level on these issues. There is also scope for better prediction, and data-sharing between the countries. There is also much greater scope for health care and education.
Discussant Comments
Naila Kabeer:
There doesn't appear to be any reasonable middle ground in the debate in Bangladesh on the FAP. People are either strong proponents or strong opponents. This can be seen in the discussion between the World Bank, the government, and the NGOs. There is a simple division between the World Bank and other donors on the one hand and the NGOs on the other. It is very hard to work out who offers the most viable solutions. I heard from Dhaka that the embankment that held and reduced the potentially destructive impact of the floods in the city was one built under the FAP. There is no room at present to meet in the middle. It is all very well to argue that what we need in Bangladesh is to continue to work for equitable land rights, but these are huge struggles which are about long-term change. We still need to look at other technological possibilities.
Mushtaq Khan:
The long term perspective is important and gives different insights. How did people cope with floods in the past? One answer is that Bangladesh is, in fact, a recent product of rivers. There is no distant past to look back upon. There is an eastward movement of the Ganges historically. In the 12th century the main flow of the Ganges was down the Hoogly. Bangladesh was swamp marshland. Some 500 years ago there were major river movements.
The land came to be settled up to two hundred years ago by Afghan chiefs, many of whom took refuge in the east from the Mughals. The fundamental geography of the country is this, and continues to change accordingly. The silt from the Ganges has made it fertile. The idea that you can construct embankments where the movement of rivers is so rapid is quite staggering. This poses serious problems for any economic trajectory for Bangladesh. Riverbeds can and do move by as much as 1 km/year. There is no technological "solution" to this.
Another implication of this geography is that prosperous flood plains agriculture is difficult to sustain. Agriculture needs a lot of investment to thrive. As soon as a middle peasant acquires some level of economic security, his instinct is not remain on the land but to migrate out. This is because the type of life that is involved in remaining on the land -- being surrounded by muddy water for large part of the year -- does not fit in with the aspirations of upwardly mobile peasants. It is not possible to have a "nice middle class life" under these conditions.
The options are few. People can migrate, and this does happen at a very large scale. It causes problems for recipient regions and countries.
The other option is to imagine the unimaginable: that Bangladesh's future economic development will not be agriculture or village based at all, but rather, it would be urban and industrial. In some ways the intellectuals, when the idealise the Golden Bengal of the village miss the point. They have a mythical nonexistent past in mind, and they perpetuate the myth of timeless village Bengal.
The FAP is a product of agricultural development policy, and did not look at diverse goods and services. Its focus has been only on rural and agricultural planning. The World Bank/Western perspective is that we have to 'keep the masses on the land', that the floods are essential for a certain way of life. The FAP is a meta-strategy for keeping people where they are.
Ross Hughes:
The FAP is politically loaded. They
have poured money into technology, and the pro-construction agenda has
been the official line. The unofficial line is that it has been a disaster.
The consensus behind soft engineering has seen $7.2 billion spent on technical
interventions, and at the time this was done, the recession in the West
was affecting the engineering/consultancy firms here, and the FAP was a
very useful way to help them get over that period.
Civil engineering at a regional level is
not a response. There are different kinds of floods and different reasons
for preventing them. The FAP has too narrow a focus, and the way the problem
has been defined is also narrow. What is needed is integrated thinking
and the bones of a soft systems approach at the micro-economic level.
Firdaus:
The damage done to the soil by the kind of
agricultural policy Bangladesh has pursued - e.g. by HYVs, soil
degradation, arsenic due to irrigation, - indicates that we need to rethink
our development strategy. The FAP has been divisive, and no one is
talking about alternatives. It is a very difficult debate to initiate.
People have started to leave and internal migration is a problem.
This is an urgent problem and we have to look at creating employment at
places where people are converging, including the cities.
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