ABSTRACT
One of the main goals of the United Nations International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction has been to minimize human vulnerability to all natural disasters. Vulnerability has been defined by the UN Disaster Relief Office (UNDRO, 1982) as ‘the degree of loss to a given element or set of elements at risk resulting from the occurrence of a natural phenomenon of a given magnitude’. Besides potential loss of life, loss of crops and damage to floodplain infrastructure, including shelter, are the main elements at risk during high-magnitude flood events. Elaborate flood mitigation strategies, which can broadly be classified as structural and nonstructural, have been developed to reduce vulnerability to flood disasters. Although the recent ‘trend is away from complete reliance on structural measures towards combining them with a package of nonstructural approaches’ (Alexander 1993: 134), most of these measures are modern or post-industrial. Very little attention has been given to incorporating and/ or reinforcing traditional/folk flood adaptation measures in official strategies for reducing vulnerability to flood disasters. The World Bank-sponsored Flood Action Plan (FAP) in Bangladesh is an example of such strategies that neglect or undervalue traditional flood adaptation measures (see Thompson and Sultana, Chapter 20).
