Tropical Cyclone Aila and Its Environmental Impact on Coastal region of Bangladesh

Abstract

Bangladesh is among the world’s most disaster-prone countries and the frequency of natural disaster has increased in recent years. The coastal morphology of Bangladesh influences the impact of natural hazards on the area. Especially, in the southwestern area, natural hazards like tropical cyclone Aila impacts badly on coastal dwellers and environment and slow down the process of social and economic developments and environmental stability. The purpose of this research is to examine the environmental impact of tropical cyclone Aila in the light of physical and cultural environmental aspect and determine problems created because of environmental impact by underlying environmental, socio-economic and other relevant variables that related to the environmental impact in two remarkable cyclone-prone coastal villages of Bangladesh. Relevant data are collected from two cyclone prone coastal villages of south-western Bangladesh through structured questionnaire survey, key informant interviews and field observations. The questionnaire survey was conducted through simple random sampling procedure, and study villages were selected purposefully considering the severity of environmental impact of cyclone Aila. Both descriptive and inferential statistics are used to identify the factors responsible for environmental impact due to cyclone Aila and storm surge. In physical environmental aspect the study shows that cyclone Aila is cause of large-scale destruction of forest, land erosion, increased saline intrusion of water and soil, air pollution, uneven flood and so on. In cultural environmental aspect it seems that Aila is responsible for widespread deaths, loss of livestock and livelihoods, infrastructural damage, loss of sanitation sector, forced migration etc. All these impacts provoke loss of ecosystem, poverty, malnutrition, appearance of various diseases, school dropout and social unrest. The study also recommends some strategy to recover these problems.