Disaster management with sustainable development

October 13 (yesterday) was the ‘International Disaster Mitigation Day’. Like other countries, this day was celebrated through various events in Bangladesh. This year’s theme was- ‘Good Governance in Disaster Risk Reduction Ensure Sustainable Development’.

Due to its geographical location, Bangladesh is known as a ‘disaster-prone’ country. And that’s why; the Bangladesh government took the initiative to celebrate the day. Disaster is a natural or man-made catastrophic accident. Most of the disasters occur in the nature of violence. Disasters often change a person’s mental outlook. Disaster is not only a problem of Bangladesh but also a global issue.

Mitigation means to reduce, to lessen something. Disaster Mitigation means reducing the level of disaster. In fact, disasters cannot be stopped completely, but the level of disasters can be reduced by preventing disasters. So the word ‘Mitigation’ has been used in conjunction with the word ‘disaster’.

There are two types of disasters. The first one is a natural disaster and the second one us man-made disaster. A natural disaster is any natural phenomena that have an adverse effect on the socio-economic condition of the people. The disaster caused by human unconsciousness is called a man-made disaster.

There’s behind a lot of reasons by the caused disaster. A natural disaster is caused for different reasons like soil erosion, seismic activity, tectonic movement, air pressure, and ocean current etc. Human-made disaster is created by the consequence of technical or human haphazard, industrial accidents, nuclear radiation, and terrorism by and large.War may also be put in this category.

Cyclone, flood, drought, earthquake, tsunami, fires, deforestation, landslide, river erosion, are some of the most well-known natural disaster, which are often organized in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh suffers from floods, cyclones, bank erosion salinity intrusion. Cyclones and floods particularly caused massive damage in our country.

In many countries as like Bangladesh, monstrous deforestation is changing climate and geography. Now it is very clear to all of that, deforestation has a substantial contribution to global warming. In the last 20 years, flooding has been the most common natural disaster by far, all most 43% of all recorded events.

In a joint report with the UN office for disaster risk reduction the center for research on the epidemiology of disaster recorded 3062 natural flood disaster between 1995 and 2015.

Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, has had 10 earthquakes in the past 365 days. Bangladesh Disaster Forum has been working for a long time on disaster management in the coastal area of Bangladesh.

It’s very hard to calculate the exact amount of damage caused by the disaster. Besides, those who are lost at sea also leave to be excluded from the government calculation. Therefore, it is not possible for the government to help all the victims.

So, we should be very concerned about this matter so that no one is harmed with disaster. Only then, it is possible to bring sustainable development in our country.

Sanjida Mahmud Misty is currently studying IER at Jagannath University