Bangladesh is a developing country in South Asia which has approximately fourteen core population.

It is also known as a disaster prone country and is surrounded by thousands of rivers such as the Ganges, the Brahamaputra, and the Meghna and so on. The Himalayan range to the North and the Bay of Bengal in the South creates a complex weather system. Bangladesh is a common victim of natural calamities due to this unfavorable weather condition. Major natural calamities are tropical cyclones, tidal bores, floods, tornados, river bank erosions, earthquakes, etc. A large number of poor people live in the vulnerable areas in the southern part of Bangladesh. The vulnerability is so miserable that they must resettle in the newly accreted land in the Bay of Bengal and its surrounding areas which are occasionally hit by tidal bores or devastating cyclones. The adverse impacts of these natural hazards affecting the socioeconomic condition need to be reduced for sustainable development. Realization of this reality, the Government of Bangladesh (GOB) has undertaken a lot of plans and programs for disaster reduction through disaster management.

Bangladesh is one of the largest deltas in the world, with a network of 230 rivers and rivulets and a coastline of 710 kilometers, hosting an unique diversity of ecosystems. According to the Integrated Coastal Zone Management Plan (ICZMP) of Bangladesh, 19 districts or 147 upazilas are defined as coastal districts, out of which 48 upazilas are exposed to the coast and 99 upazilas lie in the interior coast. In Bangladesh, about 30 million people are coastal inhabitants, relying on agriculture, fisheries, forestry, salt panning etc for their livelihood sustenance. Unfortunately, the coast of Bangladesh is identified as a zone of multiple vulnerability, prone to severe natural disasters such as cyclones, storm surges and floods. Combined with anthropogenic hazards such as erosion, arsenic contamination of the groundwater, water logging, soil salinity and various forms of pollution, the coastal and marine environment is under threat. Against this backdrop, Bangladesh initiated a process to develop the National Programme of Action (NPA) in 1999 under the Global Programme of Action (GPA) for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land based Activities, formulated by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The 1999 NPA was prepared on the basis of secondary information and lacked scientific guidance and methodology. In 2003, at a meeting held in Sri Lanka, several pilot scale projects were selected to incorporate the findings into the updated NPA of Bangladesh. The Department of Environment (DoE),

Ministry of Environment and Forests was thus entrusted with the responsibility of formulating the updated NPA for Bangladesh, earmarking the challenges exist in the coastal zone and suggesting strategies to overcome them. IUCN Bangladesh Country Office and BCAS were also associated in the preparation of the updated NPA to enrich this key national document with their knowledge and experience gained through the implementation of pilot project.

Disaster management: A general scenario Sustainable development is hinged with disaster management vis-a-vis risk management; the GOB initiated the "Support to Comprehensive Disaster Management" project in 1993 with overall goal to reduce the human, economic and environmental costs of disaster in Bangladesh. One of the main elements for the development objective of the project was to increase the capacities of the households and local communities in the highly disaster prone areas through establishment of Local Disaster Action Plans (LDAPs), which is a plan is to cope with cyclones, floods and other potentially disaster situations. Training and awareness rising was another main element of the development objective under the project (Ali, 1998). The project has been completed on 30 June, 2001, making scope for the formulation of comprehensive disaster management programme (CDMP) for more holistic approach to risk management with support from development partners and international agencies. The previousGovernment leader Begum Khaleda Zia attached importance to CDMP in the context of poverty alleviation and sustainable development.

Outline of most severe disasters:

Cyclone Cyclones are the worst killer, The severe cyclone of 12November 1970 took a tool of 0.3 million human lives in Bangladesh and put property damages to more than one billion US dollars (Carter, 1991), Yet another worst cyclone which hit Bangladesh coast on April 1991 killed 0.14 million people and property damages were more than two billion US dollars, The cyclone of 1876, 1919, 1961, 1963, 1965, 1985 and 1988 were also of severe nature.

Floods Floods are other devastating recurring phenomena in Bangladesh, The flood of 1988 during AugustSeptember inundated 89,000 sq. km. Areas of 52 districts of the country and caused loss of 1517 human lives, The 1998 flood in Bangladesh with unprecedented duration of 65 days inundated 53 districts covering about 100,000 sp. Km. Areas and it took lives of 918 people, The severe floods of 1922, 1954, 1955, 1974, 1984 and 1987 are worth mentioning.

Droughts Drought is another severe natural phenomenon which at some intervals visits Bangladesh and causes disastrous crop failures. In 1979 the country was hit by a severe drought, which was termed by many as the worst in the recent past. Droughts of 1957 and 1972 were of severe nature.

Tornado Tornadoes during pre-monsoon period hit Bangladesh and caused localized devastation, both in terms of lives and properties. Tornadoes of 14 April, 1969, 11 April, 1974, 01 April, 1977 and 26 April, 1989 are noteworthy.