Severe water crisis in Bangladesh within next two decades, say experts

The Daily Star (Dhaka): Bangladesh will face severe water crisis within next couple of decades due to random contamination of surface and ground water, absence of comprehensive water sharing with neighbouring countries and mismanagement in preserving rain water.

According to water experts, although the whole world is seriously thinking of conserving their water resources for ensuring water security, Bangladesh is destroying its surface and ground water by throwing wastes in water bodies and over extracting ground water. They say as the origin of main rivers of Bangladesh is outside the country those rivers depend on upstream water to continue its flow and the country will not be able to address water related problems without integrated initiative with the neighbouring countries.

About 92 percent of the catchments area of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and the Meghna (GBM) rivers are located outside Bangladesh while the GBM river basin is around 64 percent in India, 18 percent in China, 9 percent in Nepal, and 3 percent in Bhutan. It is estimated that the catchment area of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers is 12 times the size of Bangladesh.

Former UN water expert Dr SI Khan said the water dispute with India is as old as the inception of Bangladesh. It started even before Bangladesh when India's 'ill-conceived' Farakka Barrage on the Ganges was built to divert water for flushing silt from the Hooghly river…..

Boat and bridge, near Dhaka, shot by synthia k., Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license