Coastal populations still vulnerable to disasters
According to a report published by this daily two days ago, a majority of the 5,700 kilometres of embankments surrounding 19 coastal districts are insufficient in preventing floods, increase in salinity and tidal surges caused by cyclones.
The coastal region is home to 35 million people, that is, 28 percent of the country's total population. According to a World Bank (WB) study, around eight million people in this region are currently vulnerable to severe flooding during cyclones, when the water level becomes more than three metres deep. The international body warns that this number of flood victims may increase to 13.5 million in the next 29 years. Also, a large number of people living in coastal areas have gone below the poverty line in recent times due to increased salinity and displacement caused by natural calamities.
The embankments, which were constructed during the 1960s and 1970s, have been badly damaged by the increasing rate of natural disasters in the coastal region. Urgent steps are needed to bring about necessary repairs to these dilapidated dams.
The report shows that the government secured loans from the WB to improve over 400 kilometres of embankments in six coastal districts, after two back-to-back cyclones, Sidr and Aila, caused serious damage to the coastal region in 2007 and 2009, respectively. Although implementation of the project was to have started in 2013, it took two more years to take off and unfortunately, in the last half a decade, only 65 percent progress has been made. Without finishing up the first phase (which is already behind schedule), the government has already started discussions with its various development partners to initiate the second phase of this project. Getting on with a new scheme without figuring out the challenges faced by a previous one isn't going to bring forth any sustainable changes in the lives of the people there and/or the coastal environment.
Experts have suggested bureaucratic red tape, irregularities in repairing embankments, purposeful destruction of dams by shrimp farming and challenges of land acquisition as some of the problems hindering ongoing coastal development projects. The respective authorities have to listen to the numerous solutions laid out by environmental experts for their programmes to create lasting impacts. These include mitigating the challenge of land acquisition by paying compensation well ahead of beginning a project's implementation, making updates with international standard designs supervising the projects' implementation by third parties, afforestation along the embankments, keeping proper flushing and drainage sluices, regular dredging of the rivers and excavation of the canals. Delay in improving the coastal embankments, apart from increasing project costs, will keep millions of people vulnerable to future catastrophes and prolong their existing sufferings.
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