Monday, January 21, 2013

Some food for thought (or hippos)

"Despite the government establishing resettlement areas and providing construction material, people who had lived in the risk zones preferred to return there after the flood waters receded because these areas had fertile soils, their ancestors were buried there and rituals took place in these localities. Earlier studies in the Rufiji River delta of Tanzania during the period of government-mandated resettlement found that people had difficulty farming in their new environment and would return to distant farms, and they suffered economic loss because at night the unguarded farms were ravaged by hippos."

- Chapter 21, Floods, by Hanna Schmuck, page 252 in the Handbook of Hazards and Disaster Risk Reduction (2012)

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