The Costs of Living with Floods in the Jamuna Floodplain in Bangladesh

Bangladeshi people use multiple strategies to live with flooding events and associated riverbank erosion. They relocate, evacuate their homes temporarily, change cropping patterns, and supplement their income from migrating household members. In this way, they can reduce the negative impact of floods on their livelihoods. However, these societal responses also have negative outcomes, such as impoverishment. This research collects quantitative household data and analyzes changes of livelihood conditions over recent decades in a large floodplain area in north-west Bangladesh. It is found that while residents cope with flooding events, they do not achieve successful adaptation. With every flooding, people lose income and assets, which they can only partially recover. As such, they are getting poorer, and therefore less able to make structural adjustments that would allow adaptation in the longer term.