Water market actors in Dhaka: strengthening earthquake resilience and preparedness

The Urban Crises Learning Partnership (UCLP) was a two-year (2015-17) learning initiative aimed at improving humanitarian preparedness and response in urban areas. It is a partnership between Habitat for Humanity GB, Oxfam GB, the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), and University College London (UCL). The project has carried out primary research in Haiti and Bangladesh through the National Offices of Habitat for Humanity in both countries, and Oxfam in Bangladesh. The UCLP has two primary objectives: to improve the way stakeholders in urban crises engage with each other to form new partnerships and make better decisions; and to improve disaster preparedness and response in urban areas by developing, testing, and disseminating new approaches to the formation of these relationships and systems. The project has addressed these objectives by exploring four related themes: the role of actors who are not part of the formal national or international humanitarian system; accountability to affected populations (AAP); urban systems; and coordinating urban disaster preparedness. This paper by Graeme English, Luiza Campos, and Jonathan Parkinson makes a valuable contribution to the last of these themes – coordinating urban disaster preparedness. By focusing on a specific and important sector – water – in the Bangladeshi capital, the paper draws attention to a range of preparedness measures that should take place prior to a major event such as an earthquake. The paper reviews current understanding of urban disaster risk reduction for domestic water resources and distribution. It indicates that stakeholders need to better understand water market systems in order to improve their responses and preparedness for an earthquake. It analyses the current situation related to resilience in the domestic water supply chain in Dhaka, and applies market-system mapping to highlight how stakeholders can work better with communities and market actors, as well as to highlight weak links in distribution chains. The paper serves as a useful companion piece to two other papers in this series – the Dhaka City Earthquake Simulation Report; and Partnership, Coordination, and Accountability in Urban Disaster Management: A Review of Policies in Bangladesh.