Quantifying community resilience to riverine hazards in Bangladesh

Every year, 30-70% of Bangladesh is inundated with flood waters, which combined with erosion, affect between 10 and 70 million people annually. Rural riverine communities in Bangladesh have long been identifled as some of the poorest populations, most vulnerable to riverine hazards. However, these communities have, for generations, also developed resilience strategies - considered as the combination of absorptive, adaptive, and transformative approaches - to manage signiflcant flooding and erosion. It is not clear whether such existing strategies are sufflcient to generate resilience in the face of increasing hazards and growing pressures for land. In this study, we quantify community resilience to flooding and erosion of 35 of the most poverty-stricken and exposed communities in riverine Bangladesh by applying the systematic resilience measurement framework provided by the Flood Resilience Measurement for Communities tool. The low levels of resilience observed in the riverine communities, as well as their continued focus on enhancing absorptive capacities are alarming, especially in the face of growing climate threats and continued population growth. Innovative transformative responses are urgently required in riverine Bangladesh, which align with and complement ongoing community-centred efforts to enhance rural resilience to riverine hazards.