Landslide disasters in Bangladesh: An Overview

Abstract

Landslide disasters in Bangladesh's Chittagong hill districts (CHD) put lives, livelihoods, and the ecosystem at risk. Therefore, understanding the causes of landslide events in CHD is crucial to preparing and implementing disaster risk reduction (DRR) strategies. The causes of landslides are generally seen through the lenses of physical science. However, to better understand the landslide disaster mechanism, it is essential to explore the human activities that trigger and aggravate the events. This article uses qualitative social science tools and techniques to investigate CHD's anthropogenic-induced landslide disasters. Forty key informants from diverse professions, ethnicities, communities, and backgrounds were interviewed between 9 June and 3 November 2020.

The results show that human-induced landslides in CHD evolve around three broader areas: demography, climate change, and lack of coordination and regulation. First, increased population, hill cutting, deforestation, manipulated agricultural practices, and sand and stone extraction is the leading anthropogenic activities of landslides in CHD. Second, the influx of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh significantly increased landslide vulnerability. Third, climate change-induced erratic rainfall is leading to more rainfall-induced landslides. Finally, a lack of coordination and regulations among various institutions hinders the DRR process. The short, medium- and long-term recommendations include stopping illegal hill cutting and deforestation, regulating heavy vehicles, increasing coordination, institutionalising early warning systems, conducting massive awareness campaigns, conducting further research, addressing challenges such as lightning, climate migration and conflict, and creating a master plan exclusive for the entire region and coming up with a political consensus for better implementation of the plan.