water Article The Costs of Living with Floods in the Jamuna Floodplain in Bangladesh Md Ruknul Ferdous 1,2,* , Anna Wesselink 1, Luigia Brandimarte 3, Kymo Slager 4, Margreet Zwarteveen 1,2 and Giuliano Di Baldassarre 1,5,6 1 Department of Integrated Water Systems and Governance, IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, 2611 AX Delft, The Netherlands;
[email protected] (A.W.);
[email protected] (M.Z.);
[email protected] (G.D.B.) 2 Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, University of Amsterdam, 1012 WX Amsterdam, The Netherlands 3 Department of Sustainable Development, Environmental Science and Engineering, KTH, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden;
[email protected] 4 Deltares, 2600 MH Delft, The Netherlands;
[email protected] 5 Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University, SE-75236 Uppsala, Sweden 6 Centre of Natural Hazards and Disaster Science, CNDS, SE-75236 Uppsala, Sweden * Correspondence:
[email protected] Received: 25 April 2019; Accepted: 10 June 2019; Published: 13 June 2019 Abstract: Bangladeshi people use multiple strategies to live with flooding events and associated riverbank erosion. They relocate, evacuate their homes temporarily, change cropping patterns, and supplement their income from migrating household members. In this way, they can reduce the negative impact of floods on their livelihoods. However, these societal responses also have negative outcomes, such as impoverishment. This research collects quantitative household data and analyzes changes of livelihood conditions over recent decades in a large floodplain area in north-west Bangladesh. It is found that while residents cope with flooding events, they do not achieve successful adaptation.