‘Land-focused development model ineffective’

‘The grassroots organisation have to be reorganised and streamlined in order to give them a voice and negotiate with the authorities during development programmes in their localities’

KUAKATA: The non-holistic development model based only on land has been proved ineffective, head of an international NGO said yesterday, asking policymakers to take water and environment into their full account before implementing projects, reports BSS.
"So far, all development and development thoughts were land based in Bangladesh. This model has ignored the importance of river and water. As a result rivers are dyeing and water becomes scarce resource," Ms Farah Kabir, country director of ActionAid Bangladesh, told a major water conference here.
Farah said the riverside people were the worst victim of such ill planned development model in the country, where opinions and voices of the stakeholders had seldom heard of by the policy makers. Even the upper riparian countries seldom bother about the rights of the downstream people, she added.
The two-day water conference on 'Water and Democracy' kicked off at the beach town today and scheduled to discuss key issues such as water governance in South Asia, water and ecosystem, water and livelihood, as well as women and water.
Professor Ainun Nishat, a leading water and environment expert, said indigenous knowledge must be acknowledged by the policymakers and the information from the local communities has to be taken into considerations before any development projects were executed involving water and environment. So, the solutions to water-related development projects must incorporate both experts' knowledge and community observations, he added.
Sabitri Pokharel, an expert from Nepal, observed that the grassroots organization in the region have to be reorganized and streamlined in order to give them a voice and negotiate with the authorities during development programmes in their localities. She also hoped that conference in Kuakata would yield some foods for thoughts for Bangladesh policymakers and beyond.
Professor Imtiaz Ahmed of Dhaka University said right to water should be considered as equivalent to 'right to vote'. Once the rights to rivers and water are ignored or violated, it would result in the death of natural flows of rivers and the aquatic resources there.
Other experts spoke on the sessions of the first day said upstream India has to think about the rights of downstream Bangladesh and act responsibly. At the same time, they said, people of the both sides have to understand the reality- fresh water uses were increasing for diversified purposes in both sides while pollution has been putting things into worse.

 

Land-focused development model ineffective

The grassroots organisation have to be reorganised and streamlined in order to give them a voice and negotiate with the authorities during development programmes in their localities

KUAKATA: The non-holistic development model based only on land has been proved ineffective, head of an international NGO said yesterday, asking policymakers to take water and environment into their full account before implementing projects, reports BSS. So far, all development and development thoughts were land based in Bangladesh. This model has ignored the importance of river and water. As a result rivers are dyeing and water becomes scarce resource, Ms Farah Kabir, country director of ActionAid Bangladesh, told a major water conference here. Farah said the riverside people were the worst victim of such ill planned development model in the country, where opinions and voices of the stakeholders had seldom heard of by the policy makers. Even the upper riparian countries seldom bother about the rights of the downstream people, she added. The two-day water conference on Water and Democracy kicked off at the beach town today and scheduled to discuss key issues such as water governance in South Asia, water and ecosystem, water and livelihood, as well as women and water. Professor Ainun Nishat, a leading water and environment expert, said indigenous knowledge must be acknowledged by the policymakers and the information from the local communities has to be taken into considerations before any development projects were executed involving water and environment. So, the solutions to water-related development projects must incorporate both experts knowledge and community observations, he added. Sabitri Pokharel, an expert from Nepal, observed that the grassroots organization in the region have to be reorganized and streamlined in order to give them a voice and negotiate with the authorities during development programmes in their localities. She also hoped that conference in Kuakata would yield some foods for thoughts for Bangladesh policymakers and beyond. Professor Imtiaz Ahmed of Dhaka University said right to water should be considered as equivalent to right to vote. Once the rights to rivers and water are ignored or violated, it would result in the death of natural flows of rivers and the aquatic resources there. Other experts spoke on the sessions of the first day said upstream India has to think about the rights of downstream Bangladesh and act responsibly. At the same time, they said, people of the both sides have to understand the reality- fresh water uses were increasing for diversified purposes in both sides while pollution has been putting things into worse.