Bangladesh Water Partnership (BWP) and Institute of Water Modeling (IWM) have jointly organised a workshop on, “Sharing Lessons and Experiences on Current Water Management Issues, Opportunities and Challenges from Deltaic Regions in South Asia including Impending Climate Change Impacts” on 28 and 29 March at BRAC Centre in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Bangladesh Water Resources Minister Anisul Islam Mahmud addressing the meeting said, “The three major rivers of South Asia region-Ganges, Brahmaputhra and Meghna discharge nearly two billion tons of siltation into the Bay of Bengal each year; besides the deforestation in the upper riparian countries, pushes siltation tremendously. Without managing the silt, we cannot manage water in Bangladesh. Unless we are careful about our water and water management, we cannot ensure the food security in the country.” In addition he emphasized the importance of sharing data and experiences to resolve water related issues in the region. Dr Zafar Ahmed Khan, Secretory to the Ministry endorsing the Minister’s statement said, sharing of raw data within the region is very important to combat natural disasters coursed by climate change.
Ms Priyanka Dissanayake; Regional Coordinator, GWP SAS mentioned in her concluding remarks that application of environmental flow assessment and actual provision of environmental flows to downstream reaches are absent in most river systems in the region -the environmental flow assessments help in the process of decision making when water allocations are negotiated between the upstream and the downstream countries in transboundary river basins. She further discussed the importance of improving the flood water storage in Nepal to alleviate flooding in Bangladesh and increasing rainwater harvesting in the entire region to cope with drought. Finally she said the countries in the region needs to think about innovations and technologies such as, solar powered toilet introduced in India and underground flood water storage.
The workshop was well attended - almost 130 participants representing five countries of South Asia (Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka), South Asia Water Initiative (SAWI), World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Indo-Bangladesh Joint Rivers Commission, agencies working on environment, climate and water and Universities were present at the workshop.