Disaster Risk Reduction Begins at School: Research in Bangladesh Highlights Education as a Key Success Factor for Building Disaster Ready and Resilient Communities—A Manifesto for Mainstreaming Disaster Risk Education

Abstract

In many countries of the world the dream of achieving education, free and compulsory for all, remains elusive for large parts of the population. Bangladesh is a case in point. Drawing on field research conducted in Bangladesh in 2008, 2011 and 2012, including in conjunction with the international development organisation World Vision, this chapter discusses some of the linkages between education, extreme levels of poverty, forced human migration, environmental change, and disaster readiness. The study identifies protracted poverty as the predominant impediment to schooling in Bangladesh. It extends previous research by expressly inviting the participation of respondents in coastal villages in the Bhola and Satkhira districts, as well as in urban slum communities in the country’s two largest cities Dhaka and Chittagong. The findings show that severe poverty forces school age children to work in low-paid jobs as garbage collectors, recyclers, domestic workers, servants, street vendors, hotel boys, burden bearers, couriers, etc., thereby thwarting their education and perpetuating the cycle of poverty. The research recommends a holistic portfolio of educational strategies comprising formal, non-formal and informal learning approaches that are integrated at the community level. Multi-stakeholder strategies seem to be best suited to Bangladesh’s dynamic environmental, geodemographic and socioeconomic context. Disaster risk education offers auspicious benefits for resilience and disaster preparedness.

Preamble

A background video documentary on aspects of this research was published by UNSW, Sydney on 18 February 2015 and is publicly available at https://youtu.be/PBJeelgnadU.