Post-disaster Recovery for Building Resilience: Bangladesh Perspective

Abstract

Bangladesh has improved its Disaster Management in the past few decades by develo** a strong response and relief system, improving the early warning system, assessing the disaster risk within a solid policy-institutional landscape, and thus, saving the life of its citizen. Though we’ve managed to save a significant number of people’s life due to disaster, on the contrary, recent studies show that economic loss is increasing day by day due to a lack of post-disaster recovery activities both in policy and in action. For instance, we didn’t rebuild/repaired the coastal embankments when major cyclones like Aila/Sidr affected the coastal region, as a result, cyclone Amphan was able to cause major property damage. These natural disasters have caused approximately an economic loss of 10.7 billion USD (estimated) from the year 2000 to 2013 according to the Asian Development Bank (2015). Besides, a 3.2 billion USD yearly loss is estimated which is almost 2.2% of the nation's GDP. Success in reducing death has long been established, now is the time for Bangladesh to reduce property damage and economic loss by integrating long-term recovery activities in Comprehensive Disaster Management. For building a resilient nation where loss and damage of both economy and life due to disaster would be minimized, the ‘Post-Disaster Recovery’ centered Disaster Risk Management (DRM) approach should be the next priority. In this backdrop, this paper will conceptualize Disaster-Recovery in the context of Bangladesh and will also describe the rationality of the recovery-centric DRM approach by analyzing past disaster events. Lastly, by reviewing current policies and approaches towards Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), a few way forwards for establishing a long-term recovery plan would be recommended.