India to face ecological havoc from river inter-linking project
The Bangladesh Paribesh Andolon (BAPA) at a seminar and press conference here on Saturday detailed the possible devastating fallout of the project that will affect millions of people in the sub-continent.
It called upon socio-political organisations to create public opinion in Bangladesh against the plan and on the government to raise the issue with the Indian government and at appropriate international forums.
India has no right to obstruct or change the flow of international rivers flowing through Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh, violating international law, they said.
The planned project will not bring anything good for the people of India because it will go against nature. Any such approach for better utilisation of water resources should be to harness the resources allowing nature's fair play, not obstructing or diverting it by force, environmentalists said at the programmes.
The programmes were held in cooperation with AVAS, a Barisal-based NGO.
The BAPA will hold an international conference in Dhaka on December 17-19 on the river inter-linking project in co-operation with Bangladesh Environment Network (BEN), Bangladesh Economic Association (BEA), Bangladesh Porkoushal Samity (an association of engineers) and Nagorik Uddog of Dhaka University.
Participants from India, Nepal and Bhutan are also expected to attend the conference, they said at the press conference.
Environmentalists at the seminar said that except only Chittagong, six 'hydrology regions' in Bangladesh will be badly affected by the project. Bangladesh is divided into seven hydrological regions.
Besides affecting the Sundarbans' ecosystem, salinity will penetrate 80 kilometres inside the river systems in Bangladesh, affecting agriculture, forestry and fisheries, they said.
They said desertification has already started in certain river basins in northern and western regions of the country because of withdrawal of Padma water by the Farakka barrage in the upstream. The barrage is also affecting parts of West Bengal, they said.
Because of being in the downstream, Bangladesh gets 92 per cent of its natural water flow from the upstream areas. Fifty-four out of the 57 international rivers including the Ganga, Padma, Brahammaputra, Teesta, Surma and Kushiara originate from the Himalayas and other mountains and flow into the Bay of Bengal through Bangladesh.
India does not have moral right to change course of the rivers without consulting co-riparian countries, the seminar was told.
They said the Brhamaputra alone supplies 60 per cent of the waters to Bangladesh river streams. The planned Ganga-Brahammaputra river linking project of India will withdraw one third of the flow. This will create environmental disaster in Bangladesh.
India is also preparing to build Barak-Tepai hydro-electric project in the upstream of Surma-Kushiara, which will affect flow of Meghna river up to the southern region of the country.
The groundwater level in Bangladesh will fall further if more water is diverted from the international rivers in the upstream. This will affect irrigation and increase arsenic contamination of the groundwater.
They said India consulted Nepal and Bhutan regarding the river inter-linking project, but avoided Bangladesh. There was scope for discussion on the issue between prime ministers of the two countries at the recent BMSTEC conference but no talks were held.
The press conference and seminar were addressed by, among others Mohidul Huq Khan, general secretary, Zakir Hossain and Mihir Biswas, joint secretaries of BAPA; Engineer Shariful Islam of Bangladesh Porkoushal Samity; Mir Maniruzzaman, president, Anisur Rahman Swapan and ex-president of BRU; Manobendra Botbel and Advocate Ismail Hossain Negaban, former president and secretary respectively of Barisal Bar Association; environmental journalist Gopal Sarkar and NGO representative Rahima Sultana Kajal.
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