Flood losses in Bangladesh grow despite large investments in flood control infrastructure. There are only two plausible explanations. They are a physically driven increase in the occurrence and importance of floods and a man-driven increase in vulnerability caused by denser floodplain occupancy. Deforestation is occurring in the Himalayan region. But, without evidence to support arguments that environmental degradation there is exacerbating floods in Bangladesh, it is generally accepted that human actions are on the whole responsible.
Even though floodplains are one of the more obvious hazard-prone environments, widespread invasion has occurred because of countless individual decisions based on the belief that locational benefits outweigh risks. Population pressures and general poverty have encouraged this expectation further. Once floodplains become urbanized, however, there follows an almost inevitable demand for flood protection from (now organized and vocal) local communities. This is because the construction of flood embankments or other physical controls is perceived to render part of the floodplains safe. Next, land values rise and the development of floodplains gathers steam (even though structural works cannot withstand the most powerful river flows and channel changes that threaten human life in disaster years). Development encourages further human encroachments and it becomes more and more difficult to shake off the massive structural legacy. Yet, in the meantime, flood embankments and other physical controls isolate fish farmers and jute farmers from the beneficial spread of monsoon floods in normal years.
International assistance may have advanced this trend. The Flood Action Plan prompted by heavy floods in 1987 and 1988 recommended greater reliance on embankments along the major rivers. This worked well at first. But some doubt the sustainability of the embankment program. It is long-term by nature and must be sustained to make sense, with the embankments raised every year to cope with the rising channel beds that result from deposition. And then again, history shows that the integrity of embankments is the exception rather than the rule.
Bangladesh may be in a no-win situation and failure to understand environmental management issues could have dire consequences. Experience confirms the need to develop more open systems of management permitting flexible attitudes to turbulent environments, where local community needs define the modi vivendi. Flood proofing—which entails going back to using floods as much as possible instead of trying to prevent or control them—may be a more appropriate behavioral approach preferable to structural responses. The latter usually aggravate the situation in many economic, social, ecological, and institutional ways and tend to impact the poorest most severely because they are not empowered to participate in making the decisions that shape their lives.
In Bangladesh, cost-benefit analysis of planned abandonment of the floodplain structures might show acceptable financial and economic returns that equal or surpass those from further investments in flood control infrastructure. Social analysis would reveal a complex of necessary concessions between winners and losers but the opportunities to avoid poverty and conflict would then be richer overall. Ecological analysis would undoubtedly indicate greater possibilities for a return to ecosystem health and vitality. Institutional analysis would show also the need for a more open society where public servants serve the people better and calm their engineering fervor to supply management services that encourage and sustain development outside the floodplains. (April 2001)
Copyright ©2002 Olivier Serrat |
