Bangladesh has simply licensed one of the crucial greatest river engineering initiatives its historical past: the Padma Barrage, a limiteless river-control mission supposed to revive water within the nation’s drought-prone southwest.
It comes at a deadly second for South Asia’s rivers. China is constructing the sector’s greatest hydropower dam upstream at the Brahmaputra, India is accelerating its personal dam-building programme, and the treaty governing Ganges water-sharing between India and Bangladesh expires in December 2026.
Fairly than easing regional water lack of confidence, the Padma Barrage dangers including to a cycle of unilateral river engineering around the subcontinent. South Asia is coming into a regional dam-building race – with out the establishments had to proportion its rivers.
Bangladesh’s water disaster
Supporters say the barrage is a realistic reaction to persistent water lack of confidence in Bangladesh. The rustic sits on the finish of the huge Ganges-Brahmaputra river device, the place rivers that originate within the Himalayas unfold into hundreds of channels earlier than they achieve the ocean. Regardless of all this water, the principle river channels are drying up in summer season and a few smaller rivers are disappearing swiftly.
The Farakka Barrage in India, and the proposed Padma Barrage downstream.
Mehebub Sahana
Bangladesh didn’t create this downside by myself. For the reason that Nineteen Seventies, the Farakka Barrage, constructed around the Ganges upstream in India, has diverted water in opposition to the massive town of Kolkata to flush sediment clear of its port.
The results for Bangladesh are neatly documented. Its rivers have dried up and develop into much less navigable. They’ve additionally develop into saltier, groundwater ranges have declined, and serious riverbank erosion has passed off.
Farming has develop into tougher and fish shares have declined. Those environmental pressures have pressured many of us emigrate in another country.
Maximum seriously, the lowered glide of freshwater has harmed the Sundarbans — the sector’s greatest mangrove woodland, shared between Bangladesh and India. There, increased salinity has led to fashionable “top dying” amongst mangrove bushes and demanding biodiversity loss.
The promise – and dangers – of Padma Barrage
When whole, the centrepiece of the Padma Barrage shall be an enormous dam greater than two kilometres lengthy. It’s designed to retailer water all over the monsoon season and unlock it within the drier months, serving to scale back salinity intrusion through keeping up freshwater flows and pushing saline water additional downstream all over the dry season.
In idea, the barrage will revive a bunch of smaller rivers in western Bangladesh. The federal government claims it’s going to toughen irrigation throughout a lot of the rustic, whilst expanding rice and fish manufacturing.
The proposed Padma Barrage will span the Ganges river device’s greatest channel in Bangladesh.
Mehebub Sahana
But the mission raises a chain of ecological and geopolitical issues that deserve critical scrutiny.
Essentially the most quick pertains to silt, since the Ganges is an exceptionally sediment-heavy river. A dam or barrage reasons the river water to lose velocity and the power required to hold sediment, which is dumped upstream.
That is already a serious downside upstream of the Farakka Barrage. Greater than 1,000,000 other folks were displaced from riverbank communities during the last 3 a long time, as banks were eroded and floods have develop into extra intense.
Establishing a 2d primary barrier downstream – the Padma Barrage – dangers compounding those results, doubtlessly trapping further sediment rather a lot between the 2 buildings and intensifying flooding force.
The results downstream may well be similarly critical. The diversion of water into southwestern river channels — the said function of the mission — implies lowered flows in the principle river programs. If those flows aren’t sturdy sufficient to thrust back salty tidal waters, then portions of coastal Bangladesh, fairly than making the most of progressed water safety, may just face accelerating salinisation.
The Ganges river dolphin is already endangered. Ecologists concern the brand new barrage would possibly purpose it to vanish from decrease portions of the river device.
BaishyaJ / shutterstock
There’s a deeper irony right here. Bangladesh is responding to the wear and tear led to through India’s Farakka Barrage with a significant barrage of its personal.
Farakka used to be constructed to resolve an financial downside upstream, however imposed primary environmental prices downstream in Bangladesh. The ones financial issues are nonetheless unsolved – Kolkata port nonetheless suffers from silt and desires consistent dredging.
Critics concern the Padma Barrage may just reproduce the similar trend: huge environmental disruption with out the promised advantages. In different phrases, the similar engineering method that broken Bangladesh would possibly quickly be reproduced inside of that nation.
A regional combat over rivers
The mission additionally will depend on enough water proceeding to glide into Bangladesh. However China damming the Brahmaputra – along deliberate hydropower initiatives throughout India, together with plans to hyperlink its primary rivers – may just considerably scale back the amount of water coming into Bangladesh in long run. If that occurs, the Padma Barrage would possibly not have sufficient water to paintings as supposed.
The timing additionally issues. The 1996 Ganges Water Sharing Treaty between India and Bangladesh expires in December 2026, and governs the similar flows the Padma Barrage is designed to regulate. Fairly than strengthening Bangladesh’s place forward of treaty talks, the mission may just weaken its case for not easy extra water from India through signalling that it could possibly deal with lowered flows.
A number of rivers that the barrage objectives to restore glide thru each India and Bangladesh, which means recovery would require cooperation between the 2 international locations, fairly than infrastructure by myself.
Hilsa, Bangladesh’s nationwide fish, contributes round 1% of the rustic’s GDP. The Farakka Barrage led to an enduring shift on this fish inhabitants, and there are worries the Padma Barrage may have a identical impact.
Sudip Adhikary / shutterstock
That makes Bangladesh’s 2025 accession to the UN Watercourses Conference specifically vital. Because the first South Asian nation to sign up for the treaty, Bangladesh now has a more potent felony foundation to push for extra equitable water-sharing, specifically because the Ganges treaty negotiations method.
Dams can’t substitute international relations
The Padma Barrage isn’t an inherently misconceived mission. Bangladesh’s water disaster is actual, and the political force to reply is authentic.
However with out renewed water-sharing agreements and more potent cooperation with neighbouring international locations, this new barrage dangers repeating the trend of unilateral river engineering that has already destabilised South Asia’s waterways.
Infrastructure that outpaces international relations is a well-recognized explanation why for failure within the area. The problem for Bangladesh is to make sure the barrage turns into a part of a powerful felony and diplomatic framework for river cooperation – no longer some other step in an escalating cycle of hydropolitical pageant.
