Climate Change Impacts

Use wet-and-dry irrigation method in agriculture

Experts tell workshop

4 June 2010, 18:00 PM

Staff Correspondent

The government should immediately popularise the method of harvesting the best yields with the least consumption of water to tackle the climate change impacts on agriculture, speakers said on Thursday at a workshop in the city. The wet-and-dry irrigation method can produce optimum yield of rice and wheat by using less water and save energy significantly, Giasuddin Ahmed Choudhury, executive director of the Centre for Environment and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS), said while presenting a keynote paper. This method is applied with a nine-foot pipe penetrated six feet in the soil and three feet above the surface to check the irrigated water level underground. Bangladesh Water Partnership (BWP) and the CEGIS jointly organised the workshop on 'Implementation of Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan' at the LGED Bhaban. Emaduddin Ahmed, executive director of the Institute of Water Modelling (IWM), said crop diversification and growing aman and boro rice with low water consumption and making use of available information are important to face the climate change impacts on agriculture. Climate change impacts are set to gravely affect the agriculture, forestry, fisheries, health and water supply, Water Resources Minister Ramesh Chandra Sen said while speaking as the chief guest. He stressed river dredging for agriculture, water transport and environment conservation, saying there are 310 big and small rivers in the country. A total of 22 dredgers are working at different rivers. "I, however, do not like the way the shipping ministry dredges the rivers, as they dump the extracted sand back into the rivers," said the minister. Md Habibur Rahman, director general of the Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB), said cyclone Aila damaged 47 polders (a tract of low land projected by dam) stretching over 2000 kilometres of coastal embankment. Foreign donors pledged a plenty of aid for the Aila victims' rehabilitation but a single penny has not yet been released due to complicated terms and conditions. The BWDB repaired 42 polders by September. "We are facing worst situation with three polders in Dakop, Koira and Gabura that we have not yet been able to repair and as a result, 50,000 people are still living on the embankment under the open sky," said Rahman. "We too have failures, as we could not repair the damaged embankment in time," he said. Around two lakh people become homeless every year due to river erosion. Muhammad Zamir, chief information commissioner; AYBI Siddiqi, former secretary; and Dr Azharul Haq, former managing director of the Dhaka Wasa, among others, spoke at the discussion chaired by Md Shahidul Hassan, president the BWP.