Water for all

Despite living at the world’s largest delta having over 1,210 billion cubic metres of fresh water in deposit, surprisingly over 2.6 crore Bangladeshi nationals do not have access to safe drinking water causing death and health hazards to millions of children. Discussants on ‘World Water Day-2015’ on March 22 mainly highlighted those points while asking India to stop its water aggression in the upstream as it is poising a big threat to destroy the country’s ecology in the downstream. Experts held the view that it should not have been the case while both the countries are close neighbours and sourcing water from common rivers. Especially the failure of signing the Teesta Water Deal with India dominated discussions asking India to ink the deal as soon as possible to save the northwestern region of Bangladesh from accelerated desertification. We held the view that Bangladesh should also have a far-reaching water use policy to save the livelihood of people and its environment from going berserk.
In fact, Bangladesh is witnessing the extinction of important species of flora and fauna and its agriculture and fish stock are losing strength for India’s unilateral withholding of water from common rivers. In this situation as we are using more groundwater causing scarcity for drinking and irrigation water almost at all places in absence of adequate surface water reservoirs and adequate water supply in rivers and canals. Therefore we must have a sustainable water use policy soon. Especially Bangladesh is suffering the most in the dry season.
This year’s World Water Day’s motto is “Water and Sustainable Development” that underscores the importance of using water for human development by advancing economic advancement. It means underground water must remain undamaged as far as possible when using surface water for drinking and servicing industries. But pollution of surface water in cities and industrial zones are pushing people largely to depending on groundwater. Almost the entire drinking water supply and dry season irrigation are now based on groundwater and its over extraction is only depleting groundwater layers endangering future pure drinking water supply to the nation. Besides there is the growing danger that when the groundwater level will go below the sea level, salinity would affect drinking water supply and irrigation to crops.
The UN recognized safe drinking water and sanitation as a human right in 2010, meaning every person should have access to safe water and basic sanitation. But wastage and pollution of water are major barriers to achieving this sustainable development. With rapid urbanisation and industrialisation, the demand for water is only drastically increasing, while the current rate of groundwater depletion is also rising exponentially to create a bigger problem. In this situation we should make every effort with India to resolve the common rivers issues to augment water supply to our rivers. Water sharing can’t be left unresolved for long.