Monga (Bangladesh) - Risk and Vulnerability

Risk and Vulnerability

The risk of monga is identified by the Overseas Development Institute as resulting from/being:

• external shocks (e.g. an earthquake or financial crisis)
• stresses – predictable events that form part of the family life-cycle (e.g. old age or weddings)
• idiosyncratic
• covariate (large areas affected by one phenomenon such as drought)
• acute (e.g. an epidemic)
• chronic (e.g. degeneration of resource productivity under increasing population pressure)

Vulnerability is also a complex combination of the following:

• Physical: areas prone to natural disasters such as floods or cyclones
• Economic: caused by factors such as indebtedness and low, seasonal or unreliable income.
• Social: e.g. gender inequality and lack of social capital and/or networks.

There are many negative coping strategies employed and this can have both a short term impact (e.g. reducing food consumption), but it also threatens households' long term ability to help themselves out of the crisis as they are forced to sell productive assets.

Bold text==Preventing monga in Bangladesh== Preventing monga requires addressing the following issues:

1. reduce risk by protecting assets and household consumption/income;
2. prevent negative coping strategies (e.g. selling productive assets);
3. promote investment in livelihoods and productive assets;
4. increase voice and access to information.

In earlier years, efforts to counteract the effects of monga were made through Government test relief and other programmes, and by rural infrastructure `cash-for-work' interventions by long established NGOs such as RDRS Bangladesh which also carried out skills training and crop diversification from the mid-1970s. The spread of irrigation has reduced the impact of the early season monga (March, April) but is still a major factor in the September–October period before the amon rice harvest