Bio-dyke, an environment friendly solution to protect river banks

Bio-dyke is a bio engineering measure to manage and control flood water movement such as redirecting flood run-off through the use of flood walls and flood gates. This technology for controlling riverine floods is useful when there is no immediate need of heavy engineering works or a community is unable to afford construction of heavy engineering structures like gabion wall, retaining walls, breast walls, concrete dykes, among others. So far the cost of construction and maintenance of bio-dyke is significantly cheaper than construction of concrete structures making them more suitable for developing countries. The constructions of bio-dykes require simple understanding of the technology while local resources can be used in its construction. Hence, they can be implemented by local people in remote parts of poor countries. This technical briefs describes all the processes and construction methodologies of building bio-dykes using local resources and in a participatory manner, also covering aspects of finance, budgeting and sustainability.