Co-production through community participation and eco-friendly technology

By Iffat Baki Bushra

Introduction

Bangladesh is known as the land of rivers, with almost 900 rivers crisscrossing the country. A special type of natural waterbodies is found in the northeastern part of the country. Larger than ponds but smaller and shallower than lakes, these are locally known as “haors.” During the rainy season (July -September), the area gets inundated, and the haors and rivers flow together, creating huge, lake-like waterbodies (Banglapedia, 2021). These waterbodies have a complex ecosystem. Each year, when the haors flood, they bring silt that provides good fish habitat and nourishes the land, allowing for very high-quality rice production. However, it is important that the haors flood after the rice harvest is completed. Because of this, the government has taken the initiative to establish a submersible embankment, where parts will be taken down and rebuilt each year to prevent flood water from entering when the rice crops are still in the fields from November through February (Bangladesh National Portal, n.d.). Residents of the area have been closely involved in planning and managing this flood control system, providing an example of co-production in environmental management.

A Haor (water basin) in Sunamganj, Bangladesh. Source: https://images.app.goo.gl/6e32LtfwUMFaFr3M8

A village amidst haor in the rainy season. Source: https://images.app.goo.gl/tGnDHc6Sf5XdgvW28

Analysis:

In the 1920s in Sunamganj district, landlords (known as Jamindar, a title vested during the British colonial period, equivalent to a Baron) began building submerged embankments to protect their rice production, a practice which was later adopted by the Bangladesh Water Development Board (BRDB) in the 1960s (Kaisar, 2016). However, in 2018, a flash flood hit Sunamganj, shattering the existing dams and leading to huge losses for rice producers in the area. Following this flood, the government initiated a project to establish an environment-friendly embankment whose structure would be made of geo-bags and rocks. These bags contained soil, sand, and other similar materials that would not contribute to pollution, instead creating a layer of silt that would nourish the land and increase crop production (Bangladesh National Portal, n.d.). Also, a new mechanism was proposed to conserve the complex biodiversity of the water bodies. Each year, parts of the dam were to be removed to allow water to enter the rice fields after the harvest was completed. Before the cropping season would begin the following year, these parts of the dam would need to be reconstructed.

The project was supposed to be implemented with the help of laborers from neighboring districts. When community members became aware of the project, they contacted the project engineers and asked them to be employed as laborers instead of bringing people from other districts (Bangladesh National Portal, n.d.). Their ancestors had once built such dams, they argued, and they wanted to revive this tradition. Also, immediately after the flood, community members were struggling financially, and they wanted to keep the economic benefits within the community. After several meetings between the village heads and Bangladesh Water Development Board engineers, the community’s demand was accepted. Since then, community members have been building the dam starting on November 1 and breaking it down during the second week of March of every year. Thus, they claimed and internalized this project and made it part and parcel of their life, and in so doing, protected their greatest investment: rice production (Bangladesh National Portal, n.d.).

Broken embankment; Source: https://en.prothomalo.com/bangladesh/local-news/boro-crops-inundated-in-sunamganj-as-dam-collapses

Implications:

The project served as an impetus for bringing the community together, contributing to the community’s placemaking by drawing on their collective heritage. Similar examples of placemaking appear in Friedmann’s (2010) and Shamsuddin and Ujang’s (2008) work. While Friedmann discusses placemaking centered on a historical temple in an urban neighborhood, in this case, the placemaking focuses on an embankment in a rural area. Shamsuddin and Ujang’s (2008) demonstrate people’s attachment to historical shopping areas, which sustains the local economy, and a similar sense of place and economic rationality is present here. Residents wanted state funds to stay within the community to support their rice production, which was their primary economic activity. As Fateh’s (2022) explains in his article about the Bangladeshi NGO BRAC, such a desire for economic gain is an important impetus for community-based development. Following its funding, BRAC changed its ideology from Freirean critical pedagogy to neoliberalism, prioritizing a market-based solution to poverty alleviation over educating people about their own position of being suppressed. The embankment project thus illustrates the logic of development initiatives tailored to address immediate economic needs.

This embankment project is also an excellent example of co-production in which government agencies and the community collaborate to address environmental and economic challenges. As Siame (2017) explains in the case of Kampala, by engaging in co-production, residents of informal settlements—or, in this case, rural residents in a low-income region—can develop more effective and realistic approaches to state-society collaboration in planning. Ultimately, this project is consistent with Watson’s (2007) call for breaking away from planning concepts developed in the Global North and mindlessly implementing them in the Global South. In Sunamganj, the Bangladeshi engineers have adopted a technology that is appropriate for the ecology of the area and respectful of local knowledge. This example of a successful co-production in the Global South is something the North can look up to.