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1997 | Buch

Hazardous Environment and Disastrous Impact Kapitel lesen Erstes Kapitel lesen

Hazards in a Fickle Environment: Bangladesh

verfasst von: C. Emdad Haque

Verlag: Springer Netherlands

Buchreihe : Advances in Natural and Technological Hazards Research

Enthalten in: Professional Book Archive

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Über dieses Buch

This book evolved from a collaborative research project between the University of Manitoba, Canada and Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh, which commenced in 1984 to study the problems of river channel migration, rural population displacement and land relocation in Bangladesh. The study was sponsored by the International Development Research Center (IDRC), based in Ottawa, Canada. It was through this project that I started my journey into disaster research more than thirteen years ago with basically an applied problem of massive magnitude in Bangladesh. I spent two- and-a half-years, in two stages, in Bangladesh's riparian villages to collect the empirical data for this study. Then the growing disaster discourse throughout the 1980s, especially its conceptual and theoretical areas, drew me in further, gluing my interest to these issues. In the 1990s, during my research and teaching at Brandon University, Canada, I realized that, despite the large body of literature on natural disasters, there was no work that synthesized the approaches to nature-triggered disasters in a comprehensive form, with sufficient empirical substantiation. In addition, despite the great deal of attention given to disasters in Bangladesh, I found no detailed reference book on the topic. Natural hazards and disasters, in my view, should be studied under a holistic framework encompassing the natural environment, society and individuals. Overreaction to the limitations of technocratic-scientific approaches-the control and prevention of physical events through specialized knowledge and skills-has resulted in a call for "taking the naturalness out of natural disasters.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Natural Hazards and Human Perspectives

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. Hazardous Environment and Disastrous Impact
The Challenge of Understanding and Responding
Abstract
The human struggle to deal with natural events is an enduring phenomenon. The stories of Bangladesh’s people, land and water together echo this persistent struggle through the arduous landscapes of plains and rivers changing in every season like the country’s tempestuous history. Bangladesh and its floodplains, which nourished India’s great civilizations, have endured the shock of frequent floods, cyclones, and famines, withstood hard poverty, Mughol and British conquest, domination by Pakistani military rulers and civil travail to be born as an independent nation. Progress and decline, hope and despair—all play out across centuries here.
C. Emdad Haque
Chapter 2. Natural Disasters-Induced Displacement
An Overview of An Emergent Crisis
Abstract
In the last chapter I argued that threats in a natural environment and their manifestation as disasters must be analyzed in association with the human dimensions of these phenomena. In order to explain the relationship between nature and the social processes that largely determine the type and extent of risk to individuals or groups, an analytical framework is here formulated that stresses the social construction of nature and risk. This framework is a critique of the false separation of hazards from the human domain, a view characterized by a technocratic-systematic approach to the environment. The Nature and People Process (NAPP) model underscores the social-structural processes by which individuals are positioned and conditioned in relation to risk, vulnerability, and access and entitlement to resources. As well, it emphasizes the way humans as individuals and collective entities influence social changes and the use of nature. The model thus integrates the physical sphere with the human domain in the explanation of human manipulation and struggle against risks in a given environment.
C. Emdad Haque
Chapter 3. Human Coping Responses to Natural Hazards
A Survey and Critique of Approaches
Abstract
Natural hazards depend on the interface between the physical environment and human society. Thus, human aspects are essential and integral components of natural hazards analysis. The ways in which human agents, as individuals and members of society, attempt to cope with risk in the environment and loss due to extreme events change with both time and space. Such variation in human behavior is largely influenced by the worldview of a particular individual or group, which then determines their approach to nature-society relationships. But how should we view the environmental events that exceed the coping ability of a given society? What are the causes of natural disasters? To what extent is the ‘human-use system’ of resources directly related to hazards? Furthermore, how should an individual or group respond to extreme natural events? Different answers to these questions mirror the diversity of beliefs and knowledge about the human relationship with nature.
C. Emdad Haque

Riverine Hazards and Human Ecology: Bangladesh

Frontmatter
Chapter 4. Physical Dimensions of Riverine Hazards in the Bengal Basin
The Case of the Brahmaputra-Jamuna Floodplain
Abstract
What are the nature and magnitude of the environmental features of Bangladesh’s deltaic plains and floodplains? How do the events associated with these environmental features pose threats to human lives and resources? Answers to these questions are fundamental to understanding the nature of environmental hazards, and requires us to unravel the dimensions of physical exposure. Specifically, since the range of environmental events and their statistical variability profoundly affect the ability of humans to cope with potential threats and actual disastrous events, the assessment of physical dynamics is an utmost necessity.
C. Emdad Haque
Chapter 5. Social Class Formation and Vulnerability of the Population
A Historical Account of Human Occupance and Land Resource Management
Abstract
Human existence and occupance of geographical space are obvious considerations when examining environmental disasters. Yet not all individuals will be equally prone to a particular extreme environmental event. Besides the physical parameters and characteristics of the geophysical event itself, a combination of social, cultural, economic and political variables determine the degree of an individual’s proneness to a hazard. Thus, understanding social evolution and structure from a historical perspective in relation to resource-use and management is an utmost necessity for determining the nature of environmental threats.
C. Emdad Haque

Riverbank Erosion Hazard in Serajganj District-Impacts and Responses

Frontmatter
Chapter 6. The Rural Study Design
The Characteristics of the Samples
Abstract
The rural component of this study involved two field surveys in Kazipur thana—a severely affected area located on the Brahmaputra-Jamuna River. The first field investigation was part of a broader project of the Riverbank Erosion Impact Study (REIS) carried out in the summer months of 1985. This study was sponsored by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa, Canada, and administered jointly by the University of Manitoba, Canada and Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh, during 1983–1988. I undertook a follow-up study in 1995, sponsored by the Brandon University Research Committee (BURC), under the auspices of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Ottawa. In order to allow a direct comparison, the same survey instruments were used in the two rural surveys, though a few items, particularly those concerning flooding issues were added in the 1995 survey.
C. Emdad Haque
Chapter 7. Impacts of Riverbank Erosion Disaster
Understanding Differentials in Rural Socioeconomic Characteristics
Abstract
The three principal resources in Bangladesh are people, land and water. As such, the majority of the population make their living on small land holdings as owner-occupiers, tenants, sharecroppers, or as landless laborers. Although cultivation of at least two crops per year is common in most parts of the country, a rural household receives only limited economic returns from the land. Such a land-welfare imbalance is caused by the fact that the average rural landholding is less than 0.7 hectares per household and the majority of the rural population are functionally landless (Jannuzi and Peach, 1980).
C. Emdad Haque
Chapter 8. Coping Responses of Floodplain Users in Rural Kazipur
Abstract
Human coping responses to natural hazards consist of two primary components: perception and overt behavior (Chapter 3). Furthermore, we have seen that variations in these responses depend on socioeconomic-structural, experiential, and locational factors—in other words, their social, individual and geographical dimensions. This study postulates that perception and adjustment behavior of floodplain users with varying degrees relate to all of these three factors simultaneously. The following analysis thus focuses on both individual and social-collective responses to riverine hazards and involves three variables: (i) socioeconomic structure; (ii) previous experience of displacement due to river encroachment; and (iii) hazardousness of current residence by zone.
C. Emdad Haque
Chapter 9. The Displaced Poor in Urban Environments
The Case of Squatters in Serajganj
Abstract
Environmental disasters are usually characterized by the suddenness of their occurrence. Riverbank erosion hazard is no exception. As discussed in Chapter 4, the dynamic behavior of a braided river such as the Brahmaputra-Jamuna, especially in a deltaic environment, is difficult to theorize. Under such uncertainty, floodplain inhabitants seldom have the ability to anticipate the severity of an extreme environmental event, nor are they well prepared to react. Regardless, individual resource-users do not tend to undertake coping measures at times of stress due to the haphazard and abrupt onset of disastrous events. Contrastingly, in responding to a crisis that has occurred it has been observed that most disaster victims assess a wide spectrum of options (Hossain, 1988: 49; Haque, 1991; 1992). Obviously, coping options are usually not equally available to all diaster victims. Instead, the nature and number of options may primarily depend on the individual victim’s abilities, entitlements and social network, the availability of transportation and communication, and emergency, relief and rehabilitation services.
C. Emdad Haque

Emerging Policy Issues: Towards Sustainable Reduction of Disasters and Floodplain Development

Frontmatter
Chapter 10. Public Policy Issues
Water Management, Hazard Mitigation and Resettlement
Abstract
Human actions in mitigating disasters can be taken both individually and collectively. In both cases such actions are profoundly influenced by the social distribution and delivery of responsibilities, the perceived notions of public and private liability, the magnitude and scale of events, and the resource and technological capacity of those involved. Yet the roles and responsibilities of individuals and collectivities vary from society to society. In some instances they are relatively well-defined while in other cases ambiguities are not uncommon. In this regard, Burton et al., (1993) show that an individual householder may be reluctant to take precautions against a snow avalanche because he believes that precautions should be carried out by the community or because community views or policies do not favor such adjustment actions.
C. Emdad Haque
Chapter 11. Towards a Sustainable Floodplain Development Strategy
Abstract
This book argues that the environment can be made safer through interventions in the geophysical and social determinants of nature-triggered disasters—by means of improving technical, social, political, economic and cultural conditions. The Nature and People Process (NAPP) framework shows that human coping ability can be enhanced considerably; it also reveals the limits of modelling the complex interrelationships of natural environments and social factors, such as socioeconomic inequities, cultural prejudices, political injustice and legal manipulations. In this concluding chapter, I attempt to shed light, first, on the conceptual and policy implications of this study on the specific problem of riverine hazards in Bangladesh; second, on the issue of sustainable livelihood development and disaster reduction in floodplain ecosystems; and finally, on the broader application of the conceptual framework proposed in this study.
C. Emdad Haque
Backmatter
Metadaten
Titel
Hazards in a Fickle Environment: Bangladesh
verfasst von
C. Emdad Haque
Copyright-Jahr
1997
Verlag
Springer Netherlands
Electronic ISBN
978-94-011-5155-9
Print ISBN
978-94-010-6167-4
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5155-9