Environment and Disaster Management
Concepts
Understand ecosystems, biodiversity, deforestation, air and water pollution, climate change, greenhouse gases, ozone depletion, and sustainable development. Know Bangladesh’s environmental institutions and laws, the Ramsar wetland sites, and the importance of the Sundarbans as a carbon sink and cyclone barrier.
Disaster profile
Bangladesh faces floods, riverbank erosion, cyclones and storm surges, droughts, landslides, and earthquakes. Learn the disaster management cycle - mitigation, preparedness, response, recovery - and the roles of the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief, the Cyclone Preparedness Programme, and community-based early warning. Know the standard cyclone warning signals and the function of cyclone shelters.
Traps
Questions confuse mitigation with response, present adaptation and mitigation as synonyms, or attribute a hazard to the wrong region. Earthquake risk is often overstated for the wrong reason; the real concern is building vulnerability near active faults.
Rule of thumb
Classify any action by timing: before a disaster it is mitigation or preparedness; during it is response; after it is recovery or rehabilitation.
Worked example
A question asks what category a cyclone shelter falls into. Shelters are built before an event so people can move to safety when a warning is issued; this is preparedness, not response, because response begins with the emergency itself. Classifying by timing gives the answer.