Environmental challenges of trans-boundary water resources management: the case of Bangladesh

The political definition of ‘natural geography’ with regard to trans-boundary waters may pose challenges to their environmental importance. Availability and distribution of trans-boundary waters may thus give rise to dissatisfaction, disbelief and dispute among its stakeholders. The Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna (GBM) basins, shared between Bangladesh and India, as a whole, receive more water than necessary over the year, but the spatial and temporal distribution of water availability are very uneven. Focused on the trans-boundary water regime of the GBM basins, this paper discusses core issues related to environmental security by analyzing various environmental impacts due to water diversion and its significance at the national and regional levels between Bangladesh and India. Both countries have built dams and barrages on these rivers to satisfy their water needs without considering the ecological settings. Consequently, the dwindling supply of water in dry season has become one of the key contested issues between the two countries. Negotiations, however, for water sharing in this region are mostly based on anecdotal rather than scientific evidences. Both Bangladesh and India classify river flow data as secret and use the lack of mutually acceptable data as a tactic to promote their own national interests. Reviewing the environmental challenges, the paper opines for an ecosystem orientation of international norms and regimes flows for the GBM basins.