The disappearing rivers of Bangladesh

Bangladesh is a land of rivers, butchanging climatehas caused a third of the country's more than 300 large rivers to disappear.

The rivers are drying out as a result of barriers built upstream to divert water and protect people from floods that have become more frequent as the weather becomes more erratic. A drop in rainfall has also gradually reducedwaterflow.

The loss of the rivers has affected local people's livelihoods. Many of those who previously earned a living fromfishinghave turned tofarmingbecause their former work was no longer profitable.

To ease the problem, the government and NGOs are establishing programmes aimed at promoting the creation of temporary markets where people can sell goods such as jute, molasses, and lentils. There are also efforts to improvetransportso local people can move to nearby cities until their economic situation improves. The government also plans to assign property rights over land that has emerged from the water to people whose families have lived for centuries near the now-vanished rivers.

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Taxonomy

• Climate Change
• River Basin management

4 Comments

1. It sounds like there is nothing being done about restoring the rivers to their natural state. The current efforts are only curing some symptoms rather than curing the illness. The rivers need to be better managed, not the people who depend on them.

2. There is need to calculate the demand of water required for survival of rivers before construction of barriers upstreams so that ecosystem can be maintained all round.

3. The real problem is that the structures upstream are built without considering the real water demands of upstream and downstream people. During abnormal heavy rains the flood water will cause damages to downstream people, but upstream people do not wish to share the water with downstream people, which downstream people were enjoying since hundreds of years. With proper water management and constrution of well thought structures, the problem can be overcome.

4. well, that's sad but true.