Exploring Bangladesh Disaster Management's Institutional and Policy Challenges: A Critical Review

Abstract: Institutional and policy challenges in disaster management (DM) are a worldwide policy and academic concern. The research objectives were to analyse the DM institutional framework's capacity, governance challenges, community participation, and the reasons for not implementing DM policies. The critical literature review examined the Disaster Management Act of 2012, the Standing Order on Disaster (SOD) of 2019, the National Plan for Disaster Management (NPDM) of 2021–2025, and the Bangladesh DM framework. This study employed secondary data sources, including articles, newspapers, conference papers, and books. The research findings investigated that centralized decision-making, imprecise cooperation, inadequate training, political unwillingness, elite's influence, and functional overlap hampered the successful DM efforts in Bangladesh. The study's results also revealed that lack of transparency, accountability, monitoring, bureaucratic rigidity, and corruption were significant challenges to DM in Bangladesh. Furthermore, according to the findings, inadequate stakeholder participation, disregard for women's involvement in decision-making, limited participatory structures, and an ineffective government-NGO relationship were significant participatory challenges to DM. Finally, the findings revealed irregular DM committee meetings, bureaucratic hurdles, and corruption are fundamental reasons for not implementing DM policies here. The study recommended that the government might prepare short-term and long-term action plans and programs based on vulnerable districts, Upazilas, and Unions.