Case Study: Bangladesh

Geography: KS3, topic 12.1.11

Living on a floodplain brings many opportunities, but also risks. One example of floodplains are those from the River Ganges in Bangladesh.

Flooding is an annual (yearly) event. We can rely on flooding for water covering large areas of the land.
E.g. Monsoon waters (seasonal wind) and meltwater (water formed from snow and ice melting).
Floodplains are very fertile.
Rivers deposit alluvium (deposit of clay and sand) and silt (sand, clay or other material) in times of flood. Because they are fertile, rice can be grown. This benefits the farming (subsistence) economy.
Shrimp and prawn farming is carried out on floodplains.

Lots of people die when there is flooding in Bangladesh because there is much low-lying land.
90% of Bangladesh is only about 10 meters above sea level.
So low-lying islands and the floodplains are vulnerable for large parts of the year.
It’s difficult to give flood warnings to poor farmers if they don’t own multimedia phones or televisions. These farmers might not know about the dangers until it is too late.

Population increase forces people onto more marginal land each year.
In 2016, the population density of Bangladesh was around 1,252 people per square kilometer of land area.
Bangladesh has an estimated 2018 population of 166.37 million, up from the 2013 estimate of 156.5 million.
Bangladesh is also in a tropical storm region. This means that monsoon rain and meltwater flooding can be made worse if salt water floods coastal lowlands.

The FAP (Flood Action Plan) has funded the building of artificial levées.
It’s common for people to build homes on stilts in Bangladesh to decrease the chance of a flood destroying them.
Bangladesh is an LIC (low income country), but is constantly in economic crisis as it recovers annually from flooding events.
Farmers can use crops/seeds with a higher salt water tolerance.
This is so that tropical storm waters do not damage and destroy crops (this is, of course, if the crop survives the high winds).

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