Consultation Workshop: Peoples’ Plan of Action for River Basin Management

Consultation Workshop: Peoples’ Plan of Action for Management of Rivers in Southwest Coastal Bangladesh

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From: <uttaran.dhaka@gmail.com>

Dear all, greetings from Uttaran! 

We have the pleasure to invite you to “Consultation Workshop: Peoples’ Plan of Action for Management of Rivers in Southwest Coastal Bangladesh”, on January 30-31, 2010, at IDRT, Uttaran, in Tala, Satkhiria. The consultation workshop will bring together community representatives from eleven river basins in southwest coastal region in Bangladesh to present findings from basin based consultation and develop a regional plan of action for community based river basin management. “Technical and scientific experts” from Centre for Geographic Information Services (CEGIS) and Institute of Water Modeling (IWM) will also join the program. 

Many of you are aware of the chronic environmental crisis of waterloging in southwest region that plagues the region for more than a decade and every year hundreds of thousands of hectares of land goes under water for five to six months creating suffering for more than half a million people and indirectly affecting million more people.  Uttaran has been working closely with communities for decades and learned that the crisis has a long history that lies in development interventions on the river system in the region, imposing engineering-structural solutions, without considering the local water and river management knowledge and practice. Structural-engineering solutions implemented by government institutions, with finance and technical advice from international lending agencies, have not solved the problem. Uttaran has been learning and advocating indigenous water and river management practices from the communities to find sustainable solution. 

It is also important to take note that the climate change will further exacerbate the situation in southwest and unless urgent action are taken, millions of people living on the river basins in southwest will suffer. Uttaran has learned from the communities that adaptation to climate change induced sea level rise and its impact on livelihood can only be found in community wisdom and indigenous water and river management practices. For years Uttaran has been working together with Paani Committee, a community forum focused on water and river management, to facilitate such a process. 

Community participation has been a jargon used  too often in development arena but allowing the communities to review problems and plan their own solutions rarely happens. Uttaran thinks that a real participatory process can function where communities are provided with adequate space to develop their own plans and proposals. In this respect, over the last few months, Uttaran, together with Paani Committee, has been facilitating a consultative process in eleven river basin in southwest to learn more about the crisis and identify environmentally sound and economically viable solutions. This workshop will be a culmination of findings from these consultations to develop a regional plan of action for community based river basin management in southwest coastal Bangladesh. 

Uttaran experience has shown that community based river basin management and climate change adaptation is inseparably linked in the context of southwest coastal Bangladesh. We appreciate your active participation in the consultation workshop.

For any further enquries please contact: <uttaran.dhaka@gmail.com>

Please visit http://riversandcommunities.wordpress.com/ for regularly updated information linking knowledge, policy and practice for community based river basin management in southwest.

You can also find us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=37069773660 

Thanking you, 

Shahidul Islam

Director, Uttaran

Modhumati, Nabaganga river continue to dry up

Livelihood of fishermen threatened

NewAge, June 17, 2008. 

The Modhumati and Nabaganga — two major rivers in Narail — has dried up at different points, affecting the livelihood of a large number of people in the district.
   

Hundreds of people, particularly the fishermen, have become jobless due to continued drying up of the two rivers, according to local sources.
   Fishermen in the district are passing through hard times as they hardly find any fish due to siltation and drastic fall in the water level of the two rivers, the locals said.
   

Even movement of people in small boats is also being hampered due to continued siltation and emergence of a good many shoals in the rivers, they added.
 ‘Now I find it very difficult to earn my livelihood. I have no alternative to earning as continued siltation has made the river almost dead,’ a fisherman living near the River Modhumoti, said.
   

The two rivers lost their navigability long ago forcing the service of water vessels including steamer and launches to stop.
 The rivers once played a vital role in transportation of merchandise and movement of people to different places.
 A good many market places had been developed near the banks of the rivers passing through three upazilas of the district— sadar, Lohagora and Kalia upazilas.
 These market places always remained abuzz with trade activities.
   

Farmers living in the river-side areas, who used to irrigate their crop fields with the water from these rivers, cannot use river water now due to siltation and fall in the water level.
   The sharp fall in the water level of the two rivers and their tributaries has resulted in almost disappearance of fish, local sources said.
 Once various kinds of fish were found aplenty in the two rivers and fishermen got huge catch.
   

The ferry services on the Baroipara-Kalia, Kalna-vatiapara, Phordanga-Gopalgonj and Bardia-Mahajan routes are also frequently disrupted due to shoals at several points of the rivers.
The total area of shoals in the two rivers covers around 3,000 hectares, according to sources at the Department of Agriculture Extension, Narail.


Local people have long been demanding that the government should immediately dredge the rivers to increase their navigability of the two rivers.