Climate Change & Adaptation
3. Discussion
between the variables of coping strategies for overcoming the loss of production and the factors of no crops yielding.
3.8. Damage of forest and coping strategies
Figure 3 contains information about types of damage of forest and coping strategies. Figure includes the information of all (120) household-dwellers as the forest of all households was affected by cyclone Aila. Here damage as independent variable divided into full (black color) and partial (gray color), and coping strategies as dependent variable categorized into four:
afforestation, plantation of deep rooted trees, plantation in highland and dyke plantation-tree plantation in coastal area to protect tidal of water-, are depicted in figure 3. Data in figure 3 show that the highest 41 percent household-dwellers planted trees on highland when they experienced full damage of forest, with the following 39 percent for afforestation. As is observed, the coping strategies of plantation of deep rooted trees and plantation in highland were counted 30 percent for each when household-dwellers faced partial damage of forest in Kamarkhola village. Finally, dyke plantation was almost same for both types of damages of forest.
Fig. 3: Coping strategies of overcoming the damage of forest by types of damage
from bank, microcredit organization and mahajans2 in the village. Latter, informal mechanism include GO and NGOs support, relative’s assistance, involvement with politics and illegal connection of household-dwellers. A widespread relief intervention was initiated by the Government, NGOs and national and international humanitarian agencies in immediate aftermath of the cyclone. GO and NGOs support is considered as relief intervention and it incorporates relief materials (foods, household goods, tools, clothes, etc) were distributed for about a couple of years in order to reduce the sufferings of the Aila affected people (Masud-All-Kamal 2013). Moreover, assistance of relatives of household- dwellers is considered another informal social mechanism to recover after cyclone Aila.
Societies of Bangladesh are based on a strong kinship system (Quisumbing and Maluccio 2003; Mozumder et al.2008) and the kinship networks tend to offer support to the relatives in crisis. It is important that coping strategies of household-dwellers as collective actions are originated from the existing social structure in the study area what sociologist Blau (1964) termed ‘particularistic’- integrative bonds enhancing unifying function.
In this paper, socioeconomic aspect includes three variables, namely child education, health and income. Education is a social factor for the development of any country. Being Bangladesh as a less developed country, she has to face many difficulties to build educational institutions. Unfortunately, natural disasters in different times in Bangladesh destroy this educational infrastructure. Cyclone Aila created three major barriers to education of children at Kamarkhola village of Dacope upazila. These barriers are: (1) communication barrier- the roads of the affected region are fully submerged and no public vehicles are available except boat; (2) money shortage of guardians- the parents and other head of the household do not have the sufficient money; and (3) lacking of logistic support-it includes shortage of books, pen, bag, cloth and so on. Parents in household try to overcome the barriers to train their children through taking different coping strategies. Reading at home of children is commonly identified rather than attending at school. Actually this strategy reduces the communication and interaction with teachers and classmates. A few of children is trying to use indigenous logistic supports like boat as a vehicle to arrive at school. Sometimes boat cannot reach to the destination timely due to bad weather or other disruption. Late starting of studying is also significantly observed among the affected region. 41 percent students of households, who suffered from logistic support, could not continue their studies in time. It creates discontinuity and drops out of students from school. This study has similarity with manmade disaster-war of Zimbabwe and Rwandan. Alderman et al. (2006) find that children exposed to the civil war in Zimbabwe in the 1970s had lower overall educational attainment and also entered the schooling system at later ages relative to those not affected by the conflict. Akresh and de Walque (2008) find that children exposed to conflict during the Rwandan genocide of 1994 completed on average half a year less of schooling than those who were not exposed to the genocide, and were also significantly less likely to complete primary schooling.
The second impact on socioeconomic aspect of cyclone Aila is fully an unfamiliar, serious and increasing risk to population health. Climate change affects human health both directly
and indirectly (Rahman 2008). Mainly four types of health impacts of cyclone Aila at Kamarkhola village are explored incorporating wounded, malaria, kalazarand skin diseases.
Most of the identified health effects are the result of infectious and waterborne germs of post cyclone. About this World Bank (2000) suggested that Bangladesh is vulnerable to outbreaks of infectious, waterborne and other types of diseases. The damage to homes, water and sanitation facilities was particularly significant given that the population of Bangladesh are generally prone to communicable diseases, with respiratory and diarrheal diseases being the leading causes of death (GoB. 2008). Health problems increase vulnerability and reduce the capacity of individuals and groups to adapt to climate change (Rahman 2008). In Kamarkhola village, mainly two coping strategies are taken by the affected household-dwellers: (1) depend on traditional medicine given by inefficient village doctor, and (2) depend on modern medicine mainly come from floating service of NGOs and upazila health complex. Moreover, a noticeable portion of the victims for all types of health condition never took any treatment.
They depended on natural setting of body as coping strategy. It could produce result of chronic health burden in future and reduced their working capability. It indicates the institutional lacking of opportunities of coping strategies. According to IPCC (2007), in order to reduce the health impacts of climate change, adaptive capacity needs to be improved everywhere in the world.
Income of household-dwellers is identified the final category of socioeconomic aspect to be affected by cyclone Aila in various ways. It is observed that most of the households belong to the lowest income group ($1-$60) after Aila. It represents the economic vulnerability in cyclone affected area as the average monthly income of day laborer in Bangladesh is around
$122 (BBS 2011) that is still double than income range of $1-$60. To survive with poor income, household-dwellers reduce their daily meal to survive, stops study of their children, taking loan, taking aid and even get support from relatives. These strategies represent threatening to basic needs, and dependency. It can be explained as material deprivation and human being need to take such negative coping strategies for this deprivation comes when people do not have enough money to pay social participation as well as food (Bartley 2004).
Agriculture includes three sectors: (1) fish, (2) forest and (3) crops. Firstly, cyclone Aila devastated the cultivation of fish. Shrimp known as white gold is the key source of income in Bangladesh but now all gher3 are demolished and submerged. People cannot produce white gold and other fish again until the water is removed from that area. People have made different strategies like raising pond embankment, changing species and net fencing.
Secondly, reducing crops growing is observed by Aila through submerging, salinity, lacking of logistic support and loss of land fertility that has enormous economic challenge. In most of the cases land was submerged and gone under saline condition. Due to salinity 0.2 million ton of rice production is reducing. The affect of soil salinity on Aus4 production would be detrimental and Aman5also suffers over two-fold yield reduction when grown under a severe climate change scenario (Habibullah et al. 2001). Such land decrease reduced the food
3It means a place where fish is cultivated seasonally.
4A name of rice grows in rainy season in Bangladesh.
5A name of rice grows in autumn season in Bangladesh.
production also. The affected household-dwellers of Kamarkhola village took four strategies to overcome the decreasing of crops. They started to use hybrid paddy (BR), using of traditional knowledge (using ash), using modern technology (tractor) and implications of GO and NGOs instructions. Moreover, coping strategies have relation with the factors of decreasing crops. Having the intention to gain bumper crops, household-dwellers decided to produce hybrid paddy as coping strategy when submerging, salting and loss of land fertility come into account for decreasing of land crops. Thirdly, the same impact is monitored on forest at Kamarkhola village. Considering the situation of damage, it has been divided into two types comprising (1) full and (2) partial damage. People lunched several coping strategies like afforest ration, plantation of deep rooted trees, and plantation in highland and dyke plantation. Afforestation (39%) and plantation in highland (41%) are counted more as coping strategies for full types of forest damage. These strategies reflect the usages of their traditional and scientific knowledge. It is clear that having traditional knowledge, household- dwellers make embankment or net fencing to protect fish, use ash to fertile land growing crops, and afforestation and plantation in high land to grow forest. But household-dwellers expresses scientific knowledge in practicing species changing especially nurturing new fish for salty water, cultivating hybrid paddy (BR) and use of technology, and dyke plantation after Aila. Finally, GO and NGOs intervention has been considered as social support to recover. Furthermore, in economic category, I find reciprocal relations to cope with cyclone affected society: (1) in the first case, household-dwellers cope with hazardous situation getting sense from existing structure. That is, people apparently depend on tractor to plow land quickly that is already built. (2) In second, household-dwellers invent some strategies that are not uncovered earlier and work as new element for structure. For example, changing species to adjust with saline water in the coastal area is remarkable.