Challenges Faced by Humanitarian agency in Emergency Response in Urban areas: Lessons from Haiti and Chile
response in Haiti and Chile. And try to focus those in detail with the support of secondary data. This paper took Haiti and Chile earthquake as a case study and tries to bring out the lessons which can be applicable for Dhaka or Chittagong for disaster management. And bring out the limitation of the legal framework and disaster management plan in urban areas by GOB with workable solutions. The limitation of the paper itself is absence of primary data due to time constraint.
Urbanization and its Causes
2. For Urbanization a more technical definition is given by the United Nations as “Urbanization means movement of people from rural area to urban areas resulting population growth which is equal to urban migration.” The urbanization processes are largely driven by government development policies and budget allocations, which often favor urban residents over rural areas, tend to pull people into the urban areas. In the cities, public investment, which often misses the urban poor, with expenditures biased towards the higher-income classes and poverty among vulnerable groups such as new migrants force them into slums and squatter settlements. Urbanization may occur for the following reasons.
2.1 Economic reasons The urban areas offer better wage-labor opportunity than the rural areas due to the conglomeration of industrial and service sectors (primary and secondary economic activities). On the other hand the rural economic structure is waning because of a variety of reasons like: massive river erosion in rural areas (in Bangladesh), fragmentation of cultivation land, erratic monsoon and failure of crops etc.
2.2 Spatial mobility When the head of the family is employed in any organization in the urban area, it is seen in many cases his family accompanies him there. So this results in movement to urban areas.
2.3 Educational reasons The premium institutes of higher educations are mainly located in the urban areas. So education results in migration to urban areas. Though on the surface it seems to be a temporary one but after education people don’t want to go back to the villages again and they settle in the urban areas for the lucrative job offers they provide. So the temporary migration becomes a permanent one.
2.4 Reverse urbanization When the cities grow the adjacent rural areas are gradually embedded in the urban area and form urban agglomerate. In this way though there is no absolute migration from rural to urban areas still it is a case of urbanization.
2.5 Searching for a better life The people from rural areas migrated to urban areas for having a better life and enjoying the urban facilities like better medical care, sanitation and food supplies, which reduce death rates and cause populations to grow. In many developing countries, it is mainly the rural poverty that drives people from the rural areas into the city in search of employment, food, shelter and education.
Hazards in Urban areas
3. The urbanization is a process and like other process it has got some side effect also. The first process of urbanization started with industrial revolution and afterwards the rate of urbanization increased beyond its capability to sustained especially in Asia, Africa and followed by Latin America. And the process turned into uncontrolled urbanization and creates number of hazards. These hazards can be classified also in the following manner, e.g.
(i) Technological hazards
(ii) Natural hazards
(iii) Human-induced natural hazards
Over population due to migration causes a negative impact on urban development and causes pressure on its infrastructure like public transport, law and order situation, education facilities and health care. This unexpected migrant people create an immense pressure on land, water and life line systems of the urban areas. Most major metropolitan areas face the growing problems of urban slump, loss of natural vegetation and open space, and a general decline in the extent and connectivity of wetlands and wildlife habitat. The increased population creates tremendous pressure on demand and consumption of water. It becomes a challenge to supply drinking water especially in urban areas. The excessive use of ground water makes the ground water level lower in every year and creates the possibility of land slide in urban areas. The sanitation and drainage system are collapsed due to heavy rainfall and poor network system. Everyday as many as 30,000 people die from preventable water- and hygiene-related diseases and the children are most prone to the water borne disease. The