Livelihood under stress: The case of urban poor during and post‐flood in Dhaka, Bangladesh

• Published in: The Geographical journal 2021-09, Vol.187 (3), p.186-199
• Main Authors: Akther, Hasina, Ahmad, Mokbul Morshed
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Capital assets; Climate change; Dhaka City; Economic conditions; flood; Flooding; Floods; Households; Human capital; Livelihood; Low income groups; Poverty; slum dwellers; Slums; Social capital; Stress; Urban areas; Urban development; Urban growth; Urban poverty; Urban sprawl; Vulnerability
• ISSN: 0016-7398; 1475-4959
• DOI: 10.1111/geoj.12379

Urban floods resulting from climate change and unplanned urban growth are creating tremendous stress on the urban poor who are already living in vulnerable conditions. This paper sets out to analyse the livelihood status of the urban poor in a regular situation and a situation under stress due to urban flood in Dhaka city. Two urban poor settlements were surveyed; 400 households were interviewed. It was found that the urban poor households had different types of livelihood capitals at different levels which expressed the livelihood status of the households. In a normal situation, slum dwellers were living with a moderate level of livelihood status, which dropped down to a poor level during a stressed period. The store of capitals of households influenced the capacity of a household to cope with stressed situations because adaptive capacity and sensitivity were controlled by the stock of capitals. Capitals were influencing each other internally, which produced differences in livelihood status among households in both normal and stressed situations. The geographical setting, intensive flooding, poor socio‐economic conditions, and lack of collective actions profoundly increased the vulnerability of slum dwellers. These findings suggest that more emphasis should be given to improve capital assets, particularly human capital and social capital, for increasing the capabilities of the urban poor to reduce poverty and to cope with periods of crisis. This paper discusses two slum settlements with almost similar characteristics within a small area to see the differences in the level of livelihood status between the slums in two situations in terms of livelihood capitals from the Sustainable Livelihood Framework. ​