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Water, risk and vulnerability in Bangladesh: Twenty years since the FAP

Issues surrounding water, risk and vulnerability in Bangladesh have captivated managers and researchers for centuries. The region represents one of the most complex sociophysical interfaces on Earth and is often characterized as ‘extreme’, including references to income, wealth and land distribution, sediment load, population density, seasonal water fluctuations and the resilience of indigent floodplain inhabitants. Within this context, climate, population and socio-economic projections suggest that future environmental management will face unprecedented challenges (IPCC, 2007). In particular, both government and academic authors prescribe the need for integrated or interdisciplinary understandings in order to overcome the growing complexity of water-related problems. At issue is the development and the quality of life for what will potentially become a population of more than 250 million by 2050 (UN, 2003). Such a future both discourages and calls forth contemplation, study and action. Embracing this challenge, the authors assembled for this theme issue draw upon what Whatmore (2009, p. 588) calls a ‘knowledge controversy’ and share her view that such contexts create ‘opportunities to arouse a different awareness of the problems and situations that mobilize us’. This theme issue was born out of recognition that the twentieth anniversary of the flood action plan (hereafter FAP) represented an ideal opportunity to reflect on the present state of water, risk and vulnerability in Bangladesh. Keeping in mind the controversy that ensnared the plan, we have asked a diverse collection of authors involved in water-related research to present their research, if at all possible, with reference to the FAP. In part, the rationale for assembling these authors is to reinvigorate critical debate over water, risk and vulnerability management; simultaneously, we are engaging with the widespread advocacy – within both government and academic literatures – for integrated ‘solutions’ to waterrelated ‘problems’ (GoB, 1999, 2001; Brammer, 2004; Höfer and Messerli, 2006). Thus, the authors of this issue have come together with the purpose of arousing a refreshed and historically informed awareness of the multiple water, risk and vulnerability issues facing Bangladesh. We hope that a sampling of the interrelated issues may spark further, and more critical, consideration for the issues surrounding integrated research in Bangladesh and beyond.