Arsenic poisoning in Bangladesh: spatial mitigation planning with GIS and public participation

Abstract

A PPGIS (Public Participatory Geographical Information System) has recently been developed in combination with PRA (Participatory Rural Appraisal) and GIS (Geographical Information Systems) methodologies to utilise GIS in the context of the needs of communities that are involved with, and affected by development programmes. The impact of arsenic poisoning in Bangladesh is ‘tragic and painful’ on patients’ health and their social life what was described as the ‘worse mass poisoning in human history’ in a WHO report. Deep tubewell is said to be a source of arsenic-free safe drinking water and people are mainly interested in deep tubewell water rather than rainwater harvesting, dug-wells, and pond-sand-filters (PSF) approved by the BAMWSP (Bangladesh Arsenic Mitigation Water Supply Project).This paper mainly explores the application and suitability of GIS with local community participation in deep tubewell planning for arsenic mitigation. The relevant data for this study were collected from the field survey. The PRA methods were used to obtain social and resource information; while a GIS was used to organise, analyse, and display the information. Participants from three different focus-groups were asked to determine their ‘own priorities’ for spatial planning of deep tubewell for arsenic-free water. The study results valuable community perspectives on deep tubewell planning and reveals the suitability of PPGIS in spatial planning for arsenic mitigation with local community mapping overlay. The process of dialogue and preparation of mental mapping within each focus-group participants lead to enhance information about community needs of deep tubewell in the study area.