Futures 33 (2001) 783–802 www.elsevier.com/locate/futures The open approach to flood control: the way to the future in Bangladesh Nazrul Islam * Department of Economics, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA Abstract This paper offers a critique of the cordon approach to flood control that Bangladesh has been pursuing for several decades now. It shows how this approach fails to solve the flood problem, deprives the floodplains from benefits of regular river-inundation, creates a risky situation for the inhabitants inside cordons, brings in new problems of drainage and sanitation, and leads to huge waste of resources. The paper then argues for the open approach to flood control as the way to the future. The main components of this approach are: re-excavation of river beds and other surface water bodies, minimization of obstruction on floodplains, increas- ing the elevation of rural and urban dwellings, restoration of waterways, and promotion of rural settlement consolidation around permanent flood shelters. The paper shows in what ways the open approach to flood control is superior to the cordon approach.  2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Nowhere is the twin problem of scarcity and over-abundance of water more acute than in Bangladesh, a country that lies in the largest delta on earth created jointly by three mighty rivers, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, and the Meghna, and their distributaries. The amount of rainfall in the catchment basin of these rivers is four times larger than that in the entire Mississippi basin, and more than 85% of this precipitation occurs during only four rainy months of the year: June–September. These rivers originate and flow down the slopes of the Himalayas, which is a rela- tively young mountain range, and thus pick up a huge amount of silt. About a trillion cubic meters of water laden with about two billion tons of silt passes through the Bengal delta in just four months. For the rest of the year the area remains relatively * Tel.: +404-727-8643; fax +404-727-4639. E-mail address: nislam@emory.edu (N. Islam). 0016-3287/01/$ - see front matter  2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII:S0016-3287(01)00019-2