The International Farakka Committee (IFC), a New York-based water rights group, yesterday called to keep the common Himalayan rivers alive through basin-wide integrated management. This could be achieved through the regional cooperation between the people of all the riparian countries, it added.

All the people living beside these rivers can benefit from the services of these natural endowments only if they remain alive, IFC office bearers told reporters at the National Press Club. They warned that the continuous unsustainable development activities on these rivers would spell their death, which would be “extremely unfortunate and devastating”.

The IFC office bearers also urged all concerned to support and extend their cooperation to millions of flood-affected people.

IFC chairman Atiqur Rahman Salu said excessive floods and water scarcity were the results of unsustainable river management. He also said that the people of at least 30 districts out of 64 in Bangladesh were now affected by serious late-monsoon floods due to the onrush of water of common rivers from across the border and incessant rainfall.

Quoting experts, Salu said 92 per cent of the floodwater came from the upper catchments of the common rivers, while the rest was generated by local rainfall and flowing streams from the hills.

According to him, IFC has been advocating for over two decades that excessive floods during the wet season and shortage of water during the dry season in the lower catchments of the common rivers were the result of unsustainable management of these natural systems.

“Owing to the unplanned construction of a series of dams and barrages at the upper catchments of the Ganga, Brahmaputra and Meghna, many small rivers in the sub-continent have started dying. In Bangladesh alone, 30 rivers in the Gangetic flood plains do not have flows in the dry season now,” he said.

The IFC chief also said that in the absence of adequate flow and current, the big rivers were losing navigability due to the formation of shoals and chars. “They are losing their capacity to carry water to the Bay of Bengal. The water during the rains thus overflow their banks and lead to the recurrence of floods,” he added.

Prof. Jasim Uddin Ahmad, president of the IFC’s Bangladesh chapter, said the country has not only faced serious destruction of agriculture, industry, fish production, and navigation, but also a serious environmental degradation in the Gangetic catchment area on the south-western part of the country due to inadequate flow of water.

He also said the Gorai, which is the main distributary of the Ganga, does not have any flow in the

dry season despite years of dredging. To add to the misery, the flow of Teesta in Bangladesh has become uncertain, he added.

“This is because the central government of India has not succeeded in inking a treaty with Bangladesh on sharing waters of its rivers due to opposition from the state government of West Bengal,” he said.

Ahmad also said that the water of the Teesta segment was required in Bangladesh to protect the northern part of the country from turning arid as well as for sustaining agriculture and the environment.

IFC coordinator Mostafa Kamal Majumder said the people strongly believed that by pursuing friendship with India, it would be possible to resolve the problem. “The honourable Prime Minister has been elected as a member of an influential UN committee on water.

We believe that the she would be able to stop the diversion of water from the Teesta river basin to other river basins. This is because the transfer of water from one basin to another is prohibited under international law,” he added.

He said the water of Teesta was now being diverted through the Mahananda and theGanga on the other side of the Bangladesh-India border to further south. “Will it be sustainable to kill the part of Teesta flowing into Bangladesh? Will the people of Bangladesh, who are being denied its flow, accept this?” he added.

He claimed that if the problem of water diversion from the Teesta was not resolved, the Gajaldoba barrage constructed on the other side of the border was going to turn into another death trap for the people of Bangladesh.

“This is because the implementation of this project would cause untimely death of the Himalayan rivers that have kept the subcontinent green and habitable. Otherwise, around 1.5 billion people in South Asia will face unprecedented environmental catastrophe. The IFC urges all, irrespective of political affiliations, to remain vocal against the move to prevent the disaster,” he added.