Living with floods: Stark realities

Bangladesh, a South Asian country, is prone to flooding due to its being situated on the Ganges delta, and the tributaries flowing into the Bay of Bengal. The coastal flooding coupled with the erosion of the country's river banks is common and it severely affects its landscape and society. Seventy per cent of Bangladesh is less than 10m above sea level and 80 per cent of it is floodplain, which makes the country very much at risk of widespread damages despite its development. While permanent defence arrangements, strengthened with reinforced concrete, are in place, many embankments are composed purely of soil and bamboo fencing and built by local farmers.
Flooding normally occurs during monsoon from June to September. The convectional rainfall of monsoon is added to by relief-rainfall caused by the Himalayas, together with its melt-water. This often lasts for about 1 month.
Each year, about 26,000 km2 - around 18 per cent - of the country is flooded, killing over 5,000 people and destroying more than 7 million homes. During severe floods, the affected area may exceed 75 per cent of the country, as was seen in 1998. This volume is 95 per cent of the total annual inflow. By comparison, only about 187,000 million m3 of stream flow is generated by rainfall inside the country during the same period. The floods have been causing devastations in Bangladesh through ages, recently during the years 1957, 1966, 1974, 1987, 1988 and 1998. The 2007 South Asian floods also affected a large portion of Bangladesh.
Small-scale flooding in Bangladesh is required to sustain its agriculture, as sediment deposited by flood waters fertilises crop fields. The water is required to grow rice, so natural flooding replaces the requirement of artificial irrigation, which is time-consuming and costly. Salt deposited on fields from high rates of evaporation is removed during floods, preventing the land from becoming infertile. The benefits of flooding become clear in El Niño years when monsoon is interrupted. As El Niño becomes increasingly frequent, and flood events appear to become more extreme, the previously reliable monsoon may be succeeded by years of drought or devastating floods.
The people of Bangladesh are quite familiar with floods. But even by local standards, the flood onslaught in the summer of 2014 has been unusual. A combination of heavy monsoon rainfall in the country's main river basins and the arrival of melt-water from the Himalayas have triggered severe flooding in the country's Lalmonirhat, Kurigram, Nilphamari, Rangpur, Gaibandha, Bogra, Sirajganj, Jamalpur and Sherpur districts.           According to some estimates, more than 275,000 people have been displaced and more than 31,000 homes have been destroyed and 188,000 damaged. The floods have also affected crops, with more than 40,000 hectares (100,000 acres) of farmland submerged in 20 districts, mostly in the north of the country.
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 virtually is a test of response mechanisms. Improvement has been made in regard to flood forecasting system, but there is still lack of coordination among government agencies.      
Heavy flooding across Bangladesh has forced thousands of people to leave their homes and caused severe damage to crops. The situation worsened as flood waters poured into the low-lying areas of the capital Dhaka - home to 15 million people. More than 300 schools in flood-hit districts have been shut. NGOs estimate that the floods have left 500,000 homeless and, according to UN World Food Programme (WFP), "Others, who have nowhere else to go, have remained in their flooded homes." Part of the infrastructural weaknesses stems from the fact that Bangladesh's Water Development Board is responsible for building and repairing embankments, which protect people from floods, while the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief is responsible for reacting to disasters. This results in the lack of coordination between the two agencies. A single organisation should look after the whole thing. There are still lots of things to do to improve the country's disaster response  capabilities.
 Floods in eastern Bangladesh in 2012 left thousands food-insecure as water remained for long periods and damaged crops severely. According to a foreign organisation's estimate, this year's (2014) flooding in the country also damaged agricultural lands. The main crops Aman and Aush - the two rice crops - and jute and vegetables were severely damaged as most of the fields were under water for more than 20 days. Damage of the main agriculture adversely affects livelihoods of the farmers in the long run. Experts at the Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre in Dhaka said two of Bangladesh's main rivers, the Meghna and the Brahmaputra, had continued to rise, leaving people in 14 of Bangladesh's 64 districts either marooned or forced to seek shelter on higher ground or schools.
The Bangladesh Red Crescent Society and International Federation of the Red Cross have warned in a statement that evidence points to infrastructure damage that will have short- and long-term impacts. A large number of hand tube-wells are estimated to have been contaminated by flood waters, forcing the affected population to seek alternative water sources. With the shortage of safe drinking water and proper sanitation facilities, the risk of diarrhoea and other water-borne diseases remain high.
Heavy flooding in southeastern Bangladesh in July 2011 has forced more than 20,000 people from their homes in Cox's Bazar and Teknaf districts. The homes of more than 20,000 people have been completely destroyed by the flood waters, with another 84,000 homes partially damaged. When the water receded, many of these became inhabitable. When the Bakkhali and the Matamuhuri rivers burst their banks, most of the displaced sought refuge in the more than 30 cyclone shelters in the low-lying areas. The newly displaced added to the burden of more than 400,000 people already forced from their homes and unable to return due to rising flood waters. At least, seven people died in the floods. Cox's Bazar and Teknaf, both coastal districts, are prone to such disasters.
The severity of 2011 flooding has caught many by surprise. "Never in my life have I seen such flooding. The worst cyclones never submerged such a huge area for so long," said Abdul Quddus, a resident of Piyemkhali sub-district of Cox's Bazar. According to the district relief and rehabilitation officer (DRRO) for Cox's Bazar, rice and shrimp farmers have been badly affected by the flooding, with damage to the latter sector estimated at over US $3 million. Monsoon is a critical farming season; and with the seedbeds destroyed, a tough challenge had awaited the area. Chakoria, one of the hardest hit sub-districts (upazilas) in the region, provides almost 80 per cent of the vegetables in this region. The people of the area had a very hard Ramadan that year.  Continuous raining of up to a week is nothing new in monsoon. What was really surprising, however, was the unprecedented level of flooding here that caused widespread deforestation of nearby hills and woodlands.
On the other hand, Bangladesh is one of the countries at most risk from climate change, as it is low-lying, and could be swamped by rising seas - particularly if they rise by several metres. Now it seems the very embankments built to protect the people "could make them more vulnerable to floods". Bangladesh is about to upgrade 600 kilometres of coastal embankments in the Sundarbans region in its south-west. It is using US $400 million from the World Bank (WB). The WB says the upgrading will "build resilience to climate change". But British geo-morphologist John Pethick says the upgraded embankments will put millions at risk. He has apparently annoyed Bangladeshi scientists by arguing that coastal defences in the Sundarbans delta are doing more harm than good.
  In the past 50 years, Bangladesh has built 4000 kilometres of embankments along the coast. About 30 million people live on polders - land enclosed by embankments - or in areas earmarked for polders. Most of them are fishers or farmers. Many do not own their land, and must move around as shifting tides move the sand bars on which they live. The area's low-lying river deltas are disappearing beneath the waves faster than can be explained by global sea-level rise. Conventional thinking points the finger at land subsidence, but Mr Pethick has evidence that the embankments are the problem. Despite Mr Pethick's argument, Bangladesh is going ahead with upgrading the embankments. The WB says Pethick's findings will be taken into account.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed by floods and cyclones since the country won independence in 1971. But the country has also received praise for its work in disaster preparedness in the recent years. Experts say losses of lives and properties are declining thanks to the construction of cyclone shelters and improved evacuation procedures.   
The writer is a retired professor of Economics, BCS General Education Cadre.
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