The vicious circle of flood and poverty under the urbanization : a case study in Bago city in Myanmar
Abstract
A vicious circle of poverty and flood is becoming paid more attention internationally. For example, poor people are disproportionately affected by flood and cannot get out from poverty because they don't have enough options when deciding their or responding to flood. In addition, more and more people in urban areas are becoming vulnerable to threats from flood under the rapid urbanization, so it is urgent task to deepen the understanding about this vicious circle.
In previous studies, most focus on how catastrophic flood affected the living condition of the residents, and they mainly assess the damage from only one flood. On the other hand, it is said that accumulated effect of less serious floods is thought to exceed that of devastating disaster, though it is not proved yet. Therefore, this research is aimed at clarifying how the multiple and recurrent floods have impact on the livelihood of residents, especially that of the poor, under the urbanization. We selected Bago city in Myanmar as a study area. The household survey was conducted in June, 2019, and collected 440 household's data about such as flood damage and response to 2011 flood and 2018 flood, which are the largest floods in recent years. We gained two results through statistical analysis of this data. First, it is clarified recurrent and large-scale floods are one factor that widens socio-economic gap gradually. In particular, income loss during floods is largely related to deterioration of economic condition of poor household because most of them are daily labors who cannot work and get income during flood. Second, the households who moved in recent years were more damaged than households who lived in their place for a long time. These results suggest that the vicious circle will be in more serious condition in the future in a developing city like Bago. This study provides a novel insight in that it clarifies even the recurrent floods cause a vicious circle of floods and poverty. This research is useful in considering sustainable city planning in that it implies urban planner should consider not only land use plan but also how to achieve diversification of occupation and stabilization of income in order to alleviate or eliminate the vicious circle of flood and poverty.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMNH11C0790S
- Keywords:
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- 4333 Disaster risk analysis and assessment;
- NATURAL HAZARDS;
- 4335 Disaster management;
- NATURAL HAZARDS;
- 6309 Decision making under uncertainty;
- POLICY SCIENCES;
- 6334 Regional planning;
- POLICY SCIENCES