Disaster risk index: How far should it take account of local attributes?

The coastal areas of Bangladesh are disaster prone. Along with natural hazards there are persisting local hazards (e.g., salinity, river bank erosion) in the coastal parts. An approach to disaster reduction strategy, therefore, varies here highly with other areas and also with other disasters. Disaster risk that comes from hazard, vulnerability and local capacity can only be applied here if the assessment addresses socio-political aspects as well. In this study we identified prevailing hazards including the ones which are particularly important for the study area. All hazards are then assessed based on local vulnerability and coping capacity. Participatory appraisal has been taken into account to understand the level of devastation of the disasters. All these qualitative aspects are then categorized to fit in mathematical model of disaster risk estimation. A GIS based approach of multi-criteria analysis has been applied to incorporate the spatial factors in the index. Therefore, the final output is enumerated for each land parcel (locally called mouza) where spatial variability is represented and shown on maps. There are 11 identified hazards in the study area which have association with 11 social factors of vulnerability. The disaster risk index (DRI) also takes account of three geographic factors of vulnerability that are aggregated with the social factors to calculate a reliable DRI. The aggregated outcome is finally validated with historical data of disaster occurrences in the study area and found significant correspondence. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd

Brackish Water Shrimp Farming and the Growth of Aquatic Monocultures in Coastal Bangladesh

One of the most significant changes in marine and coastal environments since the mid–twentieth century has been the growth of coastal shrimp aquaculture in many tropical and sub–tropical regions of the world. This chapter, which draws on the author’s own archival and field research and the published works of other students of the global shrimp market, examines the growth of brackish water shrimp production from the 1970s to the present in Bangladesh’s coastal belt and its social and ecological impacts. It shows that for most of this period shrimp production was encouraged by the Bangladesh Government to expand in a fragmented and uncoordinated way with varying environmental, economic and social consequences. These included higher levels of soil salinity, increased risk of flooding, loss of agricultural land, a decline in biodiversity, contraction of various traditional occupational activities, growth in new non-agricultural work, a shift to diversified employment strategies among households, higher incomes for shrimp farmers and land renters and economic and social dislocation for others. Government, business and international aid agencies supported the expansion of mono–cultural forms of shrimp production integrated into global trading networks at the expense of local resource extraction activities such as artisanal fishing and forestry