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Appropriate Technology to Reduce Risks and Protect Assets: An Example from Development Cooperation in Bangladesh

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Technologies for Sustainable Development

Abstract

Recent disasters have revealed how risks are highly linked to existing development gaps, weak and inappropriate technologies as well as growth in economic and population exposure. Technology choices can contribute to risk reduction, but can also significantly increase and create risks. Especially in the two projects of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)—Livelihoods, Empowerment and Agroforestry (LEAF) and Samriddhi—HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation as implementing agent has started to systematically apply Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), so the identification of appropriate technology was key. Although it is widely acknowledged that structural measures shall be based on local priorities, such measures today are often donor-driven and stand-alone interventions instead of being part of an integrative holistic approach. The paper focuses on the question how do we define appropriate technology by referring to the expensive flood protection measures by the World Bank (WB), who was asked by the government to develop the Flood Action Plan (FAP), after the successive floods in Bangladesh in the 1980s and 1990s. In the flood-prone area of Sunamganj (the project region), flood protection measures in the form of massive protection walls were built around the hatis. These walls became the most visible and aspired measures against flood so that communities stopped their traditional practice. The faith in such traditional technologies eroded over time as communities waited for these protection walls to be built and the precarious hatis continued to erode causing loss of life and property including negative impacts on various livelihood activities in each successive monsoon season.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Disasters are a complex mix of natural hazards and human action. Indeed, a crucial point about understanding disasters is that they are not purely the results of natural events, but the product of social, political and economic context in which they occur.

  2. 2.

    Structural measures or so-called hardware are any kind of physical construction to reduce possible impacts of hazards or engineering techniques to achieve hazard-resistance and resilience in systems (UNISDR 2009).

  3. 3.

    HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation is one of the most experienced and largest development organizations in Switzerland. For more information, see: www.helvetas.org

  4. 4.

    For more information about the projects and SDC, visit the following websites: http://www.swiss-cooperation.admin.ch/bangladesh/; http://www.deza.admin.ch/ and http://bangladesh.helvetas.org/en/activities/

  5. 5.

    The name of the project meaning “prosperity” in Bangladesh.

  6. 6.

    The total project's working areas cover Rangpur, Bogra, Rajshahi regions in northwestern and Sunamganj district in northeastern Bangladesh; however, the focus in this paper will only be on the Sunamganj district.

  7. 7.

    The examined damage costs in the feasibility study by Intercooperation in 2009 are in line with a study conducted by the Dutch Poverty Reduction and Environmental Management program for the same region which calculated about US$ 190 per household per year which corresponds to about one fifth of the total income (Aftab et al. 2006).

  8. 8.

    Contribution by the communities is a conditionality of the project.

  9. 9.

    The basis for the tool is the Community Risk Assessment and Risk Reduction Action Plan guidelines developed and used by the Government of Bangladesh (MOFDM 2005) and the Community-based Risk Screening Tool, Adaptation and Livelihood (CRiSTAL), developed by iisd, Intercooperation, IUCN and SEI. For further information and to download the tool: [http://www.iisd.org/cristaltool]

  10. 10.

    The boro rice is commonly known as winter rice. The term boro is Bengali originated from the Sanskrit word “Boro” which refers to a cultivation from November to May under irrigated condition (IRRI 2005).

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Adwyait Kumar Roy, the Program Coordinator of Samriddhi, for the good collaboration and all his support and Rupa Mukerji for her fruitful inputs throughout the entire paper. The critical review by Chris Morger is equally gratefully acknowledged as well as the comments by Felix Bachman. Special thanks also go to the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) for the financial contribution for elaborating the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environment and Climate Change, Advisor Disaster Risk Reduction and Adaptation to Climate Change, HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation, Weinbergstrasse 22a, Zurich, Switzerland

    Nicole Clot

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Correspondence to Nicole Clot .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. VPAA – Cooperation & Development Center (CODEV), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Jean-Claude Bolay

  2. Cooperation & Development Center (CODEV), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne VPAA, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Silvia Hostettler

  3. Cooperation & Development Center (CODEV), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne VPAA, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Eileen Hazboun

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Clot, N. (2014). Appropriate Technology to Reduce Risks and Protect Assets: An Example from Development Cooperation in Bangladesh. In: Bolay, JC., Hostettler, S., Hazboun, E. (eds) Technologies for Sustainable Development. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00639-0_21

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