Key findings from Bangladesh NCAP Project

• 1 Perceived Changes in the Observed Climate
• 2 Problems due to climate change
• 3 Coping Measures: Inherent Resilience
• 4 Coping Starts with Strengthening Houses
• 5 Coping Strategies for Agriculture
• 6 Coping Strategies Taken by the Fishing Community
• 7 Coping with Food Insecurity
• 8 Availability of Safe Drinking Water
• 9 Coping with Energy Insecurity
• 10 Crisis Coping
• 11 Hazard Specific Coping Strategies
• 12 Women’s Vulnerability to Natural Disasters in Noakhali
• 13 Next. . .

Perceived Changes in the Observed Climate

The changing scenarios of climatic events that have been perceived and mentioned by the participants of focus group discussions (FGDs) carried out at the study area are as follows:

o Excessive rainfall in a few successive days

o Change in the rainfall calendar

o Increase in Temperature

o Routine occurrence of drought

o Colder winter

o Excessive fog during winter

o Salinity in soil

o Salinity in drinking water

o Waterlogging

o Occurrence of tidal surge

o Occurrence of floods

o Frequency of Occurrence of Cyclones

Problems due to climate change

Participants were asked in all the discussions to outline the problems and sufferings, personal, social and economic, that they confront in their day-to-day lives afflicted by the occurrence and variability of the major climatic events.

o Waterlogging

o Drought

o Cyclones

o Salinity

o Changes in Temperature

Coping Measures: Inherent Resilience

Coping practices are often spontaneous and an immediate response of vulnerable people to different shocks. People use the means that are available to them in order to cope. The livelihood conditions of the people largely depend on the ownership of or access to capital by households which broadly determines their capacity, scope and survival strategy. The asset base is categorized by human, social, natural, physical and financial assets.

Coping Starts with Strengthening Houses

At the very outset of the study the team made a reconnaissance visit to selected areas. Other than the Pouroshova (n urban centre, where an elected body takes care of local level development and management issues), in most of the unions kacha houses are made of bamboo (muli bamboo) and tin roofs are very common; jute sticks are used as walls and jute fabrics as ceilings. People who are very poor use mud as a house building material. These types of houses are more vulnerable to natural disasters than the brick-built houses of comparatively wealthier families.

Everyone tries to strengthen their houses before the seasons of rainfall and cyclones start. They do this in a manner which is within their means. Usually the foundations of all the houses of Noakhali Sadar and Subarno Char upazila are raised so that the rain water cannot enter the house. Usually they raise the platform to a height which will protect the houses from regular/average flooding from rain water. The families who have some extra money to invest in their houses, raise the platform of their houses above the average height of anticipated rainfall which causes devastating waterlogging condition. The kitchens are also placed on raised platforms.

When the living conditions deteriorate due to excessive rainfall, people move all their household utilities on to a bed where all the family members not only live but also cook. The internal structure of a house has a space in a false ceilingn called a darma. These ceiling-like raised/high platforms are built inside the houses to keep ownership documents/deeds of lands, other important papers/documents, dry food, rice, pulses, salt, sugar (gur), matches, candles, kerosene, quilts, kantha etc. safe and stored in the case of an emergency during the waterlogged period. A staircase made of bamboo usually connects people to the darma.

Ovens are made using mud, tin, and cement and kept on darma in order to use during waterlogged periods/times of flooding. Cooking is done on top of beds using those ovens, which the participants have learned to use via demonstrations/publically performed mass communication campaigns. Raised platforms for urination and defecation purposes are also constructed from bamboo

Houses outside the embankments are usually raised on even higher platforms, allowing the regular tidal surges to flow without any interruption. This platform is about 4 to 5ft high. Then on this raised platform people again raise another platform, about 1 to 2ft high, building the house on this secondary raised platform. This secondary raised platform helps to protect the house from abnormal tidal surges. People do post-harvesting activities on the primary raised platform. Other than this two-stage raised platform, the internal arrangements of the houses outside the embankments are almost the same as the houses inside. The financial conditions of the households outside the embankments are the worst. Most of the houses here are built of mud. There are latrines in some houses, but the overall sanitation conditions are not at all satisfactory.

People carry out preparations before the cyclone season starts. Preparations depend on their capacity to invest. Usually they tie the corners of their house with strong ropes or wires to the ground. To protect from rain they repair the ceiling almost every year. Walls made of mud and ceilings made of jute sticks or leaves are especially taken care of before the rain comes or cyclones strike. People who are very poor and do not have the means to repair their houses with minimal effort, take shelter in a neighbor’s house, adjacent school or madrasa. During the waterlogging, livestock shelters in the same room as the family lives. Very few families can afford the luxury of keeping a separate shed for cattle which is locally called a Goal Ghar.

Coping Strategies for Agriculture

As agriculture is the main sector of economy in Noakhali Sadar and Subarno Char upazila, a detail edeffort has been initiated to study the corrolation of changes in cropping patterns with different climatic events. Different cropping patterns are followed in different unions of the same upazila. The pattern depends on land type, salinity, land quality, availability of irrigation facilities etc. The practiced cropping behaviors of the selected sample sites of Nokhali Sadar and Subarno Char upazila are summarized later. Details of agricultural coping practices are also described in later.

Coping Strategies Taken by the Fishing Community

For the past 15 to 20 years culture fisheries have been kept by the inhabitants of Noakhali Sadar upazila. In some areas of Subarno Char, which are in the southern part of the upazila and close to the Meghna River, some people prefer to catch fish in open water.

Problems Encountered by the Fishermen

The fishermen reported through a consensus that:

a) The availability of fish has declined significantly;

b) Not only has the availability has gone down, but the number of species of fish in open water has dramatically decreased. About 75% of the species previously available are not seen or caught anymore.

c) To catch fish, fishermen now have to go to deeper rivers/sea.

It is understandable that the problems of culture fisheries and the fishermen who fish on open water are not the same. The fishermen who only depend on fishing and do not have any other trade or business also have unique problems. Fish traders have business throughout the year, but fishermen in culture fisheries face employment insecurity in dry seasons, especially in the month of Falgun and Chaitro due to the drying up of the ponds. They then employ ‘crisis coping’ strategies which will be discussed later on. Fishermen who fish in the rivers/sea must have equipment to pre-warn them of cyclones. They have radios in their trawlers and head into shore following the alarm signal. However, they are not alerted before the danger signal reaches 8, they have reported.

For the fishermen involved in culture fisheries, excessive rainfall and waterlogging cause severe devastation to their livelihoods. During the waterlogging in October 2004, every fisherman suffered serious losses as their fish spilled over the banks of the ponds. Consequently they have raised the banks of their ponds to a height which can cope with a regular waterlogged conditions as well as an extreme height of water. Another coping method is to net the whole surface of the pond to prevent the fish from escaping. People who can afford this netting can try this coping strategy. However, fishermen, who are very poor and cannot afford these methods, have to accept the reality that they do not have any control over the situation. They seek alternative livelihoods like day labor, rickshaw pulling, small trade etc.

Coping with Food Insecurity

As mentioned earlier, people face seasonal food insecurity. ‘Security’, means the availability of food three times a day. Here, the question of food quality is not relevant. Focus group members agree on the changes in their food intake both in terms of quantity and quality. As shown in the figures below, their protein intake has drastically decreased in recent years, although it shows improvement for the families of fishermen, who can regularly eat fish. Pulses have always been a major source of protein for poor people. The preferred variety was mung, however people could easily afford mosuri. Now mosuri is too expensive for the majority of people. They now eat cow-peas (buter dal) which used to be used as cow fodder. This fall in protein intake causes serious nutritional problems, especially in children and pregnant women. In the months of food insecurity, mentioned earlier, the families often exist in famine-like conditions (locally known as monga). During monga they do not have their usual three meals a day. For fishing households, the dry season of Falgun-Chaitro brings food insecurity, Ashwin-Kartik for farmers, and Ashar-Srabon for day laborers. Often they cope with extreme food insecurity by consuming smaller amounts of food, and most often by forfeiting one or two meals a day. In addition, they avoid unnecessary movement, thereby conserving energy and pass most of their time sleeping. Carbohydrates form the major part of their food intake during these times of food insecurity.

Women were specifically asked how they manage this lack of food security. Often women collect vegetables from common property resources (tokano). In most cases food priority is given to the male member of the household. Then the remaining food is distributed among the old and children. Women come last. If something is left over they can have that.

To face natural disasters women often store dried food within polythene packs and store it on darma in their house as a coping mechanism.

Availability of Safe Drinking Water

Both in Noakhali Sadar and Subarno Char, people take water from tubewells for drinking. They are aware of the problem of arsenic. Not every household possesses a tubewell. Those who do not have a tubewell in their house have to go to a neighbor’s house, school or madrasa to fetch drinking water. Usually the women or children in the family are responsible for this job.

When there is excessive rainfall and waterlogged conditions, sometimes polluted water reaches the water level of tubewells, and then it is extremely difficult to obtain safe drinking water. During waterlogging or flooding, water is purified either by boiling or by using alum (fitkari). However, as electricity is not readily available during flooding so it is difficult to boil water for drinking. Rainwater is collected to use as drinking water when all the tubewells become flooded. On top of this, wood is stored on darma to be used as firewood for boiling pondwater.

The inhabitants of the Subarno Char in particular, had previously been used to drinking water from shallow tubewells. But now-a-days, with the dissemination of knowledge, they usually drink water from deep tubewells since the chance of water being contaminated is much lower. In the past, when they did not have any specific knowledge of contamination, they used to drink surface water as well.

Coping with Energy Insecurity

Biomass is still the most important source of energy. But as the common property resources decrease over time and agriculture tends to depend on technology rather than animal power, the availability of cow dung has decreased. In farmers’ families agricultural residues are an important source of energy, while the families of fishermen are largely dependent on fuels bought from the markets. Dried-up maize plants, paddy straw, roots and branches/creepers (lata) of bean plants etc. are used as firewood for cooking. During waterlogged periods this fuel is stored on darma.

Crisis Coping

Households adopt a wide range of strategies to cope with crisis. Sometimes, immediately after or during the crisis, people take out loans from local Mahajans (wealthy people) which high interest rates (usually 100 tk. interest per month for 1000 tk. of loan) to deal with their emergency needs. If, during or just after waterlogging or drought, diarrhea and other diseases breakout they often resort to informal loans. Often in this situation they sell their assets. Of course, selling land is the last resort for them.

Seasonal migration is very common, especially during the dry season when farmers cannot cultivate land due to salinity or lack of irrigation facilities. People often leave their houses and go to nearby cities in search of job opportunities.

Hazard Specific Coping Strategies

Waterlogging

• To cope with waterlogging, some houses are being built with fences made of bamboo (muli bamboo) and wood. Yet most of the houses are made of mud and bamboo fences.

• The foundation floors of the houses are raised so that water does not enter, until it reaches a certain level.

• In the case of crop-agriculture, late varieties of Aman rice such as kazal-shail, raje-shail (both black and golden), chapraish, kartik-shail, dholamota, leiccha, nazir-shail are sown as they are more resilient to waterlogging.

• During the waterlogged period cattle are kept on raisied floors. Seedbeds are also prepared by raising the land with soil/mud. In some places crop-land is raised quite considerably for cultivating winter crops (rabi crops).

• As a precautionary and safety measure, the sides of the fish ponds are raised up to a certain level so that the fish are not washed out of the ponds.

• Fishermen catch fish in ponds, reservoirs and sometimes in waterlogged land since almost all the canals are filled up with silt and the Meghna River changes its course due to flooding.

• Ceiling-like raised/high platforms (darma) are built inside the house to keep important documents, dry food such as cheera, muri, rice, pulses, salt, sugar (gur), matches, candles, kerosene, quilts and kantha, etc. safe and stored during the waterloggedperiod.

• Those who live from hand to mouth become compelled to borrow money. If they fail to borrow any money or food, they have to go unfed.

• Rainwater is collected to use as drinking water since tubewells are unusable during the waterlogged period. As well as this, wood/branches of trees are stored on darma to be used as firewood for boiling pondwater.

• During waterlogging/flooding, water is purified either by boiling or by using alum (fitkari).

• Dried-up maize, paddy straw, roots, branches and creepers (lata) of bean (seem) plants, are used as firewood for cooking.

• Cow-dung collected either from own cattle or from other sources is another source of energy for cooking.

• Ovens are made using mud, tin, and cement and kept on darma for use during waterlogging/flooding. Cooking is done on top of beds using those ovens, which the participants have learned to use through demonstrations performed in mass communication campaigns.

• Raised platforms are made of bamboo in order to use for urination and defecation purposes during waterlogging/flooding.

Salinity

• The inhabitants of the Subarna Char Thana in particular previously used drinking water from shallow tubewells. But now-a-days, with the dissemination of knowledge, they usually drink water from deep tubewells since the chance of water being saline is much lower. In the past, when they did not have any specific knowledge about salinity they used to drink water from ponds as well.

• Now even when people drink water from shallow tubewells, they do purify it using alum (fitkari).

• An effect of salinity is that the complexion of people’s skin becomes darker. But people adjusted to this phenomenon over time.

• Farmers use fertilizers such as gypsum, potash, etc. to reduce salinity in land.

• The extent of salinity is different for different sections of an uneven land. Therefore, to make the extent of salinity equal the farmers first make the land even and then use the various types of fertilizers mentioned above.

Drought

• With the onset of drought, lands become covered with a thin layer of salt. Farmers thoroughly plough their land in order to reduce concentrated salinity.

• Since water becomes scarce and less available farmers bring water from ponds to use on their lands for cultivation.

• Farmers usually use pitchers for fetching water from nearby ponds. Relatively well-off farmers use shallow tubewells and machines to channel water from ponds.

• Throughout the drought period there is a shortage of drinking water availability since water cannot be withdrawn from shallow tubewells. People have to look for deep tubewells nearby.

Cyclones

• In a bid to reduce the extent of loss of lives and resources, The Red Crescent Society alert people against danger and motivate them to adopt safety measures with the warning of cyclones.

• Upon hearing these announcements by the government through radio, people take refuge in cyclone shelters.

• In addition to cyclone shelters, people take shelter in strongly built houses.

• After 1991, another practice of taking shelter during cyclones has emerged with people and their cattle taking refuge on high ground.

• People usually secure their houses so that they can withstand the severity of the storms.

• They keep food in mud pots and bury them in the ground.

• People keep seeds in polythene bags and bury these in the ground too.

Floods

Due to the erection of the embankments, no drastic flooding has occurred since 1970. After the building of the embankments the only flooding has been in the form of severe waterlogging. Therefore, peoples’ coping practices for flooding are similar to those for waterlogging and cyclones.

Women’s Vulnerability to Natural Disasters in Noakhali

In Noakhali, society supports a rigid gender division of labor that perceives men and women’s roles differently and distinctly defines women’s mobility, duties and responsibilities. The traditional family model and gender roles in Noakhali are changing very slowly. However, due to extreme poverty and the increased inability of families to provide protection for their women, there is an increased mobility of rural women in economic activities when previously women would have stayed at home. Other than the Pourashava areas and some urban areas, the gender roles imposed by society are usually considered ‘natural’.

Gender Division of Labor:

In Noakhali women’s positions are rooted in their social traits, patriarchy and gender division of labor. Men’s activities are considered as income generating, while women’s activities are mostly limited to the domestic domain. The table depicts the gender division of labor in Noakhali as revealed during focus group discussions with both men and women.

Wage Rate

Today, though not comparable with their male counterparts, women are participating in the labor market, but there exists high wage rate disparities between men and women. Wage rates are different over different seasons, depending upon the demand for labor. In rural areas the wages reach their peaks during the transplantation and harvesting periods of main crops (such as T. Aman). In char areas the wage differences are even greater.

Access to Resources

Women’s access to resources in Nakhali is mostly confined to the domestic domain (domestic utilities, cattle, homestead and adjacent ponds), it is often only when they go to fetch drinking water from a distant tubewell that they leave the domestic domain. Some women have inherited landholdings (either from their father, or in case of widows from their husband), but in most cases the women do not have the right to make decisions on the usage of these resources, whether to retain them and how to use them, or to sell them. Social expectations, family values and laws all affect women’s access to common property resources, infrastructure and formal and non-formal institutions. Women’s claim on household resources is also secondary to men’s which undermines their contributions to sustainable livelihoods.

In terms of access to financial resources, hardly any women in Noakhali go to the Krishi Bank or other banks and apply for loans. Only non-governmental organisations (NGOs) sometimes support them with micro-credit, although this is still uncommon. It is the norm that the male member of the household (father, husband, brother) has the control over this money andyway, so it is difficult to assess whether the increased access to borrowing from NGOs alone can improve women’s access to financial resources or enhance their participation in private/family decision making processes. The question of who controls the resources is vital.

Access to Health Care, Safe Water, and Sanitation

It is mainly women who take the responsibility for collecting water. Those households that do not possess tubewells have to fetch water from distant households, adjacent schools, madrasas, the district board office etc. Women and childrens face tremendous problems collecting drinking water all year round. It is often dangerous when women have to go outside for water at night. There is also a risk of arsenic poisoning and people do not use those tubewells on which the Department of Public Health Engineering (DPHE) has put red marks.

The health of women, especially those who live in char areas, is in a poor state. Many women never visit a doctor in their lives and their attitude towards medication is negative. Most of the women in char areas would not consult a doctor unless there was a severe emergency. In the case of childbirth, almost every family prefers delivery at home with the help of their female relatives. The sanitation situation is very poor; almost every house in char areas uses a kutcha latrine which is unsanitary. According to these people, sanitation is the most neglected area for them.

Social Insecurities in Char Areas

The constrcution of embankments (beribadh) is a symbol of both environmental and social security for the people of char areas although people living on and outside beribadh are less secure than the people living within them. People outside the embankments are often attacked by local terrorists.When women have to go outside for various purposes like fetching water etc. they feel unsafe. People outside the embankments tend to be poorer as they are more vulnerable to disasters without the protection that those living inside the embankments have.

Next. . .

Back to:

Bangladesh NCAP Project

Netherlands Climate Assistance Programme (NCAP)

Methodology of Bangladesh NCAP Project

On to:

Bangladesh NCAP Project

Lessons learned from Bangladesh NCAP Project