Miscellaneous Knowledge Notes

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    COVID-19 Monitoring Survey in Poor and Slum Areas of Dhaka and Chittagong: Bangladesh Food Security and Coping Strategies as of Round 2, September 2 - October 2020
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021) World Bank
    By September 2020, Dhaka and Chittagong labor markets in Bangladesh showed signs of recovery in employment. Employment recovered faster in Chittagong, reaching pre-COVID-19 levels, while Dhaka remained below pre-COVID-19 employment levels. To track the impacts of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis on labor markets and household coping strategies, a rapid phone survey was implemented on a representative sample of households living in poor and slum areas of Dhaka and Chittagong City Corporations (CCs). This brief, the third in the series, summarizes results from the first and second rounds of the rapid phone survey, conducted from June 10 to July 10, 2020, and from September 2 to October 11, 2020. Ninety-four percent of respondents interviewed in the first survey round were reached in the second round. This brief focuses on how the labor market situation, and how food security and coping strategies evolved between the two rounds.
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    Impacts of COVID-19 on Food Security in Cox's Bazar: Food Consumption, Coping and Assistance
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-07) World Bank
    This brief presents findings on consumption, coping and basic needs from the Cox’s Bazar Panel Baseline Survey (CBPS) conducted between March – August, 2019 in combination with findings from the first rapid follow-up on a sub-sample of the baseline households conducted between April-May 2020. Baseline data was collected from 5,020 households across camp and host settlements (camp settlements are defined as areas within the camp boundaries set by the government, UNHCR and IOM jointly, host settlements are defined as all areas outside of the camp boundaries within the district). A 3-hour walking distance was used as a cut-off to segregate host areas as being high and low exposure to the influx. In addition to baseline pre-COVID findings, the analysis presents updated topline statistics on the current situation of access to basic needs drawn from a rapid phone follow-up of 3,150 households across camps, high and low exposure host communities.
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    Mitigating Floods for Managing Droughts through Aquifer Storage: An Examination of Two Complementary Approaches
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-01) Pavelic, Paul
    Interventions that are robust, cost effective, and scalable are in critical demand throughout South Asia to offset growing water scarcity and avert increasingly frequent water-related disasters. This case study presents two complementary forms of intervention that transform water hazards (floodwater) into a resource (groundwater) to boost agricultural productivity and enhance livelihoods. The first intervention, holiya, is simple and operated by individual farmers at the plot/farm scale to control local flooding in semiarid climates. The second is the underground transfer of floods for irrigation (UTFI) and operates at the village scale to offset seasonal floods from upstream in humid climates. Rapid assessments indicate that holiyas have been established at more than 300 sites across two districts in North Gujarat since the 1990s, extending the crop growing season and improving water quality. UTFI knowledge and experience has grown rapidly since implementation of a pilot trial in western Uttar Pradesh in 2015 and is now embedded within government programs with commitments for modest scaling up. Both approaches can help farmers redress the multiple impacts associated with floods, droughts, and groundwater overexploitation at a range of scales from farm plot to the river basin. The potential for wider uptake across South Asia depends on setting up demonstration sites beyond India and overcoming gaps in technical knowledge and institutional capacity.
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    COVID-19 Monitoring Survey in Poor and Slum Areas of Dhaka and Chittagong: Bangladesh Food Security and Coping Strategies from Round 1, June 10 to July 10, 2020
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020) World Bank
    To track the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on labor markets and household coping strategies, a rapid phone survey was implemented on a representative sample of households living in poor and slum areas of Dhaka and Chittagong City Corporations (CCs). This brief summarizes results from the first round of the rapid phone survey, conducted from June 10 to July 10, 2020 (see Appendix one for details of the survey design). This first brief in the series focuses on the labor market impacts of COVID-19.
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    Pro-Poor Groundwater Development: The Case of the Barind Experiment in Bangladesh
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-01) Banerjee, Partha Sarathi ; De Silva, Sanjiv
    The Barind region, a water-stressed area in northwest Bangladesh, had an underdeveloped agricultural economy and high levels of poverty until two projects revitalized the area with enhanced groundwater irrigation. The Barind Integrated Area Development Project in 1985 and Barind Multipurpose Development Authority (BMDA) in 1992 used new water extraction technology and innovative management practices such as deep tubewells (DTWs) fitted with smart card–operated electric pumps to develop drought-resilient irrigation. Both projects have helped the Barind region reduce poverty and achieve self-sufficiency in rice. However, there are concerns about declining groundwater levels in the Barind and nearby regions, resulting in a temporary halt in DTW expansion. Preliminary evidence presented in this case study suggests farmers served by shallow tubewells (STWs) may be losing access to groundwater in some parts of the Barind region, which can have significant development implications because these tubewells remain the predominant source of irrigation. This evidence provides grounds to question whether an irrigation model reliant on DTWs is sustainable and equitable in the long term. Further research is needed to better establish groundwater conditions and understand the risk to STW users to inform future policy on DTW-driven agricultural development.