Community resilience in recurring disaster events

Paper Details

Research Paper 01/08/2013
Views (426) Download (22)
current_issue_feature_image
publication_file

Community resilience in recurring disaster events

Tahmina Yasmin, Khaled Masud Ahmed, Farjana Mostafiz Shatu
J. Bio. Env. Sci.3( 8), 16-28, August 2013.
Certificate: JBES 2013 [Generate Certificate]

Abstract

The increasing vulnerabilities and exposures to the negative consequences of climate change are inevitable especially facing recurring natural hazards and extreme weather events, social and economic disruptions, and physiological instability. People base local knowledge for copping to survive in this changing climate without proper adaptation to such changes. The uniqueness of this research is to reveals a correlation between different coping practices with socio-economic and mental instability. In previous studies researchers emphasized on the current coping mechanisms rather than concentrating the criteria that influence the coping capacities. Methodology comprises numerous questionnaire surveys and uses of different tools of Vulnerability and Capacity Assessment techniques with selective households. Study area concentrated among the inhabitants of the char land and remote island of Bangladesh. General coping includes; eat fewer meals, borrowing money or take loan and sell labour in cheap at advance. People use major portion of their income for food and repairing houses as both are often destroyed by recurring disasters. Medical and educational expenses are just aggravating their burdens whereas savings are delusion. Malnutrition, economic imbalance, and domestic hostility along with mental instability are the common phenomena. All these sufferings contribute in lack of people’s ability to take proper decision in time of risk or affect current coping ability with recurring events or the vice versa

VIEWS 14

World  Bank.  2006.  World  Development  Report 2006: Equity and Development, Oxford  University Press, New York.

Haque, C. and Zaman, M. 1994. Vulnerability and responses to riverine hazards in Bangladesh: A critique of flood control and mitigation processes, In: A. Varley (ed.), Disasters, Development and Environment, John Wiley and Sons, New York, pp. 65–79.

Rasid H, Mallik A. 1995. Flood adaptations in Bangladesh: is the compartmentalization scheme compatible with indigenous adjustments of rice cropping to flood regimes? Applied Geography 15(1), pp. 3–17.

Paul SK, Routray JK. 2011. Household response to cyclone and induced surge in coastal Bangladesh: coping strategies and explanatory variables, Natural Hazards 57, p. 477–499.

Boko  M,  Niang  I  et  al.  2007.  Africa:  Climate change 2007: impacts, adaptation and vulnerability, In: Parry ML, Canziani OF, Palutikof JP, vd Linden PJ, Hanson CE (eds) Contribution of working Group II to the fourth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 433–467.

McKinnon K, Hickey V. 2009. Convenient solutions to an inconvenient truth: ecosystem-based approaches to climate change, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank.

UN/ISDR (Inter-Agency Secretariat of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction), 2004. Living with Risk – A global review of disaster reduction initiatives.

“EM-DAT: The OFDA/CRED International Disaster Database, 2008. University catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Bel.” Data version: 11.

Adger W. N., Arnell W. N., Tompkins L. E. 2005. Successful adaptation to climate change across scale, Global Environmental Change 15, 77–86.

Tobin, G. A. 1999, Sustainability and community resilience: The holy grail of hazard planning. Environmental Hazards 1, 13–25.

Stern, N. 2006. The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review. Cabinet Office, HM Treasury.

Brouwer R., Akter S., Brander L., Haque E. 2007. Socioeconomic Vulnerability and Adaptation to Environmental Risk: A Case Study of Climate Change and Flooding in Bangladesh. Risk Analysis 27, No. 2.

Rubonis AV, Bickman L. 1991. Psychological impairment in the wake of disaster: the disaster– psychopathology relationship. Psychological Bulletin 109, 384 – 99.

Wesley AL, Polatin PB, Gatchel RJ. 2000. Psychosocial, psychiatric, and socioeconomic factors in chronic occupational musculoskeletal disorders. In: Mayer TM, Gatchel RJ, Polatin PB, editors. Occupational musculoskeletal disorders: function, outcomes and evidence. Philadelphia7 Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins, p. 577 – 608.

Crabtree A. 2012. Climate change and mental health following flood disasters in developing countries, A review of the epidemiological literature: What do we know, what is being recommended?, Australasian Journal of Disaster and Trauma Studies 1, 21-30.

Hay J, Mimura N. 2006. Supporting climate change vulnerability and adaptation assessments in the Asia-Pacific region an example of sustainability science. Sustainability Science 1, p. 23–35.

Paavola J, Adger WN. 2006. Fair adaptation to climate change. Ecological Economics 56, pp. 594– 609.

Rasid H. 2000. Reducing vulnerability to flood disasters in Bangladesh: compatibility of floodplain residents’ preferences for flood alleviation measures with indigenous adjustments to floods. In: Parker DJ (ed) Floods, vol II. Routledge Hazards and Disasters Series, London, pp. 46–65.

Del Ninno C, Dorosh PA. 2003. Public policy, markets and household coping strategies in Bangladesh: avoiding a food security crisis following the 1998 floods. World Development 31, 7, pp.1221– 1238.

Rasid H, Haider W. 2003. Floodplain residents’ preferences for water level management options in flood control projects in Bangladesh. Natural Hazards 28(1), 101–129.

Islam N. 1991. The Ganges water dispute: Environmental and related impacts on Bangladesh, Bangladesh Institute Social Science Journal 12(3), 263–292.

Haque CE, Zaman MQ. 1989. Coping with riverbank erosion hazard and displacement in Bangladesh: survival strategies and adjustments. Disasters 13, 4, pp. 300–314.

Hutton D, Haque CE. 2004. Human vulnerability, dislocation and resettlement: adaptation process of riverbank erosion-induced displaces in Bangladesh. Disasters 28(1), 41–62.

Choudhury NY, Paul A, Paul BK. 2004. Impact of costal embankment on the flash flood in Bangladesh: a case study. Applied Geography 24, 241–258.

Karim MF, Mimura N. 2008. Impacts of climate change and sea-level rise on cyclonic storm surge floods in Bangladesh. Global Environmental Change 18, 490–500.

Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, 2005.  Statistical  Pocketbook  of  Bangladesh  2003.Dhaka:Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics.

Parvin GA, Takahashi F, Shaw R. 2008. Coastal hazards and community coping method in Bangladesh, Journal of Coastal Conservation 12(4), 181-193.

Rogge J, Haque C. 1987. Riverbank Erosion Hazard, Rural Population Displacement, and Institutional Responses and Policies in Bangladesh, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Portland, Oregon.

Bendsen H, Meyer T. 2003.The dynamic of the land use systems in Ngamiland, Botswana: Changing livelihood options and strategies. Paper presented at Environmental Monitoring of Tropical Wetlands, Maun, Botswana.

Wilk J, Kgathi D. 2007.  Risk in the Okavango Delta in the face of social and environmental change, GeoJournal 70, 121–132.

Haque CE. 1997. Atmospheric hazards preparedness in Bangladesh: a study of warning, adjustments a recovery from the April 1991 cyclone. Natural Hazards 16, 181–202.