2015•07•10     Bonn     D+C Development and Cooperation

An innovative international research project is assessing poor people’s livelihoods in Bangladesh. The scholars do not only want to understand reality, but change it.

Bangladesh has an early warning system (EWS) for cyclones. Nonetheless, Sidr, the storm that hit the coast in November 2007, killed up to 10,000 persons, according to the Red Crescent Society. Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson knows some of the reasons why so many people did not escape the disaster. In some villages, for instance, the EWS messages arrived too late, so people did not have enough time to flee to a cyclone shelter. Perhaps even more important, however, some people chose not to go to shelters at all. They wanted to stay with their cattle or their boats because their families’ livelihoods depend on those assets. People risked their lives in the hope of being able to rescue their sources of income.

Read the article online here.