Traditional Ecological Knowledge on Flow and Erosion processes in the Braided Jamuna river in Bangladesh: Part-I

Abstract

The rural people of Bangladesh are living through practicing a lot of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) in different sectors. Bangladesh is a delta of three big rivers. The people of Bangladesh are usually affected by different natural hazards such as flood, cyclone, erosion, etc. Among them erosion is a major problem in Bangladesh especially along the Jamuna river. The riparian populations are very much familiar with the erosion problem. The main issues of the present paper are the exploration of the TEK on flow and erosion processes. Primarily, <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) method was used to investigate the traditional knowledge. Different tools of PRA for example: Focus Group Discussion (FGD), Key Informant Interview (KII) and Informal Group Discussion were used at different places along the braided Jamuna river. It has been investigated from the present study that the riparian populations are enriched with the traditional knowledge on flow and erosion processes. The people are living close to the river and on the sandbar of the Jamuna river using the traditional knowledge. The following Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) have been investigated from the present study such as: (i) the morphological change of the Jamuna river, i.e. how the Jamuna river become shallow and high braiding intensity river, (ii) the local people can explain the erosion and flow processes at bends and along the straight bankline, (iii) they local people can prepare the erosion hazard map, they can prepare trend line of erosion and effective period of erosion, (iv) they can explain how a river bend is gradually developed and abandoned after several years and (v) the erosion protection and adaptation technique of the riparian people have been explored.

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