Adapting to impacts of natural disasters

One of the consequences of natural disasters is mass displacement of people. In a natural disaster-prone country like Bangladesh, this has ever remained an acute problem. Although the entire South Asian region suffers from natural vagaries, Bangladesh tops the list because of an oversize population in a small geographic location. Even the number of people rendered homeless annually on account of river erosion is likely to be higher than those forced to leave their ancestral homes in a number of its small neighbours for several other reasons. Globally the number of such people has been estimated at 27 million on an annual average since 2008. This number though does not take into account those people who are forced to flee homes because of wars and other actions by governments and other agencies. Victims of natural disasters often move away in order to settle in a new location and this kind of internal migration and people's adaptability to different conditions are a subject of intense study worldwide, particularly in the context of climate change.

A regional consultation titled, 'Climate Change, Disasters and Human Mobility in South Asia and the Indian Ocean' under the auspices of the Swiss-Norwegian-led Nansen Initiative was held in Khulna to evaluate the consequences of natural disasters ranging from just local displacement to national, regional and international migration. However it would be better if the focus is directed more to the forced movement of people with an eye to what is called climate refugees. In fact, when the consultation singled out cyclone Aila of 2009 to show how 75,000 families had to move out of their ancestral homes, it came close to doing the job rather perfectly. Sidr, Aila's predecessor too had left a most telling effect on the lives of the coastal people in the country's south. In fact, Aila coming on the heels of Sidr dealt a double blow to the common areas there. These two cyclonic storms have given enough indication of the impact of climate change. Not only have people sustained loss of lives and property, they also had to move out of their known surrounding and come to terms with changed livelihoods and life's callings.

In a situation like this, the Nansen Initiative's bottom-up approach to the entire gamut of displacement or migration, resilience and adaptability seems to be the most appropriate. Linked to climate change, the mobility dynamics has to offer answers to many questions arising out of the crises facing the human kind, particularly those in the tropical regions. For example, the intrusion of saline water, shrimp cultivation and later on a shift to cultivation of sunflower by farmers when they observed that the soil was unfit for growth of any other crop give a good account of people's adaptability. Bangladesh's response to time-to-time disasters has been appreciated the world over. There is little chance of a repeat of the loss of life in the November 1970 cyclone. However, this small country is facing an enormous challenge in the form of sheltering its displaced population in settlements with sustained livelihoods. Hopefully, the Nansen Initiative will find an answer to such a problem.