Upstream diversion threat to river management

Upstream diversion may retard natural navigability of river

The total length of the intricate river network is said to have decreased over the last few decades from 35,000 Km. to 24,000 Km. or even less leaving behind a string or seasonal flow. River based labour employment opportunities have narrowed down impacting national economy. Aquatic plants, water-fowls and fishes are disappearing. Erosions rendering thousands homeless every year. Access to water is becoming far reaching. The degradation of water quality is ubiquitously beyond the tolerance limit. Traditional sports and cultures surrounding water have been sinking into oblivion. Human emotions responsive to tidal, tranquil and twinkling waters are rapidly evaporating. Healthy streams, indeed, are now rare and dwindling resources.

Social landscapes of both rural and urban livelihood are formed and supported by rivers and canals and, therefore can never be separated from human or as such, human from rivers. These rivers and canals are seasonally flushed by abundance of water fed principally by the Ganges and Brahmaputra from the Himalayan glaciers ensuring year-round supply to hundreds of millions of the Indian sub-continent. The Meghna from north-east adjoining the world's wettest place joining the Ganges-Brahmaputra system tributaried by 50 trans-boundary rivers constitutes 93 percent of Bangladesh's total inflow and, the rest 7 percent is generated within the country chiefly from annual average rainfall of 2300 mm. And again, 96 percent of the total flow is conveyed out to the ocean by the Meghna estuary alone and the remaining 4 percent by other 28 smaller outfalls, mostly on the south-west coast. The daily average conveyance is estimated at 3000 million cubic meters with high range of fluctuation between dry and wet seasons.

A comparative analysis recently published by the Asian Development Bank on tracking water resources management in 17 countries of Asia and the Pacific revealed that Bangladesh as the most downstream riparian state, has particular interest in promoting regional cooperation in water management, but progress generally has been weak. The 1996 Treaty on Sharing of the Ganges River is not comprehensive and there are no agreements with regard to other shared rivers; projects generally are carried out unilaterally, in some cases to the clear disadvantage of Bangladesh. Further, the World Bank in one of the Bangladesh's Project Performance Assessment Report (No.31565 February11, 2005) observed that the management culture of the country's water sector... has not changed over the last decades. These two broad aspects, one within and the other outside the country, combined together has led to appalling management of the rivers and canals.

Reclamation is not bringing back the geometric configuration of the rivers or canals disrupted and knocked out of hydraulic equilibrium. So merely recreating the form without the function or functions in an artificial configuration bearing little resemblances shall not constitute restoration as defined by the river experts. The variables that shape and maintain rivers or canals are its discharge, width, depth, velocity, slope, channel roughness, bed load size, and bed load volume. These variables responsible for offsetting the rivers or canals are largely influenced by the watersheds, the land that contributes water to a common network of rivers or canals. Large watersheds are composed of many smaller watersheds upstream of the primary river or canal in the network. Each river or canal in the watershed is a tributary of the larger river or canal downstream. Every stream downstream is thus dependant on the conditions of equilibrium of that at the upstream. A living stream is in a continuous state of adjustment for attaining a condition of dynamic equilibrium by balancing these variables within a wide range of natural variability. It is thus impractical to reclaim or restore a reach or a corridor completely to its virgin state with reference to time.

Water management is generically hinged to conservancy of a river or a canal or any such source. The conservation is thus the scientific trafficking of the water of a river or a canal by drainage, detention and diversion for a particular sequence of its flow in a given situation circumventing floods, erosion and accretion, back water affects, water scarcity, thinning navigability, water logging, degrading water quality, increasing soil salinity, ground water contamination and depletion and, impacts on ecology. Unfortunately, so long so forth much less consideration has been given by the water professionals to the sustainability of rivers or canals and their water quality in designing a project for consumptive or non-consumptive use of water culminating in fatal disruption of stream's hydraulic equilibrium.

The National Water Policy attached priority to the river basin management aspects for catering the core problems of country's water resources. Twelve such programmes for development of major rivers have rightly been incorporated in the National Water Management Plan (NWMP). The main aims of these programmes are to ensure that the rivers are comprehensively developed and managed for multipurpose use focussing on inter-regional potential developments, long-term risk management and erosion control. Water Resource Planning Organization (WARPO), Bangladesh Water

Development Board (BWDB), Haor and Wetlands Development Board (HWDB), River Research Institute (RRI), Institute of Water Modelling (IWM), Joint Rivers Commission (JRC), Centre for Environment and Geographic Information System (CEGIS), Mechanical Equipment Organization (MEO), Dredger Organization (DO) under the Ministry of Water Resources along with those including Local Government Engineering Department (LGED), Inland Water Transport Authority (IWTA), Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA ) etc. dealing with cross-cutting issues are the public bodies directly or indirectly assigned with the roles and responsibilities of water resource management.

Cataclysms, stemming from poor management of rivers or canals, triggered in the past have always been imploded by high sounding commitments and assurances. The professionals claiming their competence adequate for handling these problems often cite resource as a constraint; albeit not untrue. True shortcomings elsewhere are inappropriate setting of the institution and dim understanding about rivers or canals along with lack of regional cooperation for basin-wide management. In many countries, however, separate River Basin Organisation has been formed to deal with river issues. NWMP in its drafting stage skipped off creating one such special body for dealing with river basin management in the face of the organisations' conflicting interests.

The International Conference on Sustainable Development of Water Resources held in New Delhi in November, 2000 emphasised upon the need for creation of River Basin Organisations in South-Asian countries recommending actions comprising of legal and regulatory framework, national and multi-national level organisations and, implementation and monitoring plan. The principles of basin management in general and in South Asian context in particular included suggestion for identifying pilot river basins, for development of a core group of professionals in South Asia, for exchanging professionals/experts and experience between member countries. The government may therefore initiate reviewing the institutional setting of the existing organisations including their capacity and possibly restructuring them for the purpose of right-stewarding nation's waters keeping relevance with the objectives of the National Water Management Plan. The time for pulling up socks is not much left with the sufferers brewing in the environmental collapse.

Md. Saeedur Rahman is a retired chief engineer of BWDB