Participatory Water Management Approach in Bangladesh

In the last 50 years, Bangladesh has made considerable progress in the development of its vast water resources, with some 511 projects constructed (ranging from less than 1000 ha to more than 15,000 ha) for flood control, drainage and/or irrigation. Management performance of these projects, however, fell short of expectation. The poor operation and maintenance of the systems appear to be the major causes of the schemes’ malfunctioning. In some cases, there have been serious environmental problems as well: depletion of fish stocks and deposition of silt and sands in the riverbed as well as on agricultural land. Absence of effective beneficiary participation in scheme development and management was found to contribute significantly to poor use of created facilities, and lack of maintenance of the scheme. The physical condition of the infrastructure deteriorates and after some time substantial rehabilitation is necessary. Many of the FCD/I schemes are in need of rehabilitation or improvement to meet the requirement of integrated water resources management. Recently, approaches to water management have increasingly reflected a shift from an exclusive focus on engineering aspects to integrated water management, and from a top-down approach to an emphasis on effective participation of all stakeholders. The participatory water management approach is now considered an effective way to manage the complexity of water management in Bangladesh. This paper describes Bangladesh’s road map of participatory water management. Country setting and water sector issues Bangladesh is located in the northeastern part of South Asia, bordered by India on three sides, except in the southeastern corner by Myanmar and by the Bay of Bengal in the south. It has an area of 147,540 km, with a population of about 130 million. The country is riverine. The Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the Meghna flow through Bangladesh, but only 8 per cent of these river basins lie within Bangladesh. Physiographically, the country can be divided into three broad categories: the hills, the terraces and the flood plains. The hills, situated in the southeast and northeast, make up 12 per cent of the country. The terraces occupy about 8 per cent of the country: the Barind in the northwest and the Madhupur tract in the central region. The flood plains make up the rest, 80 per cent of the country, about 10 per cent of which falls under the coastal zone. Except for the Chittagong Coastal Plains, the remaining rivers and their floodplains belong to the GangesBrahmaputra-Meghna River Systems. Basically a floodplain country, Bangladesh consists of extremely low and flat land. Almost half of the area is within 10 metres above mean sea level (m.a.s.l.). Most of the lands in the coastal region lie within 3 m.a.s.l. In addition, some low-lying areas exist in the northeast, locally called haors (seasonally filled with water), where land-levels are within a few metres of the mean sea level. The floodplains contain a wide range of water bodies. The rainfall and the river flows within the country exemplify the seasonal extremes and the conflicting situations they create. The average annual rainfall in Bangladesh is 2,500 mm, but this hides wide regional variations. The average annual rainfall in the basin of the Ganges reaches 1,400 mm, in Brahmaputra/Jamuna 2,100 mm, and in Meghna 5,000 mm. During the dry season, a net precipitation deficit occurs. The average net precipitation deficit