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Dhaka [Bangladesh]March 23 (ANI): China is trying to push forward with Bangladesh a project to fully restore Teesta River and watershed management, which is not feasible and could cause serious damage to Bangladesh’s environment in the long run.
Naturally, Dhaka is reluctant to implement it and has so far resisted Chinese pressure to accept the project, according to Bangladesh Live News.
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China is trying to capitalize on India and Bangladesh’s delay in signing the Teesta water-sharing agreement. New Delhi sincerely wants a fair share of Teesta water with Bangladesh and is keen to sign an early agreement between the two countries when Manmohan Singh was Prime Minister of India in 2011.
Taking advantage of the impasse, the Chinese government forced Dhaka to agree to a plan to dredge the entire length of the Teesta River, which runs through Bangladesh, straightening the already braided channel and digging ponds and reservoirs in the riverbed to store water for the dry season, Bangladesh National live news coverage.
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At the same time, of course, there are proposals to reclaim land in the basin, using dredged materials and loans from Chinese companies to build roads, satellite cities and industrial parks. This is a copy of China’s “Belt and Road” model, which has been tried in many countries, but has failed; causing recipient countries to fall into a debt trap.
Nearly 21 million people depend on the 100-kilometre Teesta River, which flows through Bangladesh, for their livelihoods. The river has a network of small channels with islands in between, which were formed on the river bed by the accumulation of huge amounts of sediment carried away by the Himalayas. This has led to frequent flooding and severe erosion of river banks during the monsoon, and the basin faces water shortages during the dry season, according to Bangladesh Live News.
In 1997, the Teesta River in Bangladesh had a flow of nearly 6,500 cubic seconds during the dry season, but in 2006 the flow dropped to 1,350 cubic seconds and in 2016 the flow was only 300 cubic seconds.
The northern part of Bangladesh faces a water crisis during the dry season due to the low flow of the Teesta River. Most of the 110,000 hectares of irrigated land in the Teesta River Basin in Bangladesh became uncultivable during this period.
In 2013-14, only 35% of the total irrigated area was used for cultivation.
Chinese engineers hope to store monsoon rainwater by building a network of canals and ponds, forcing rivers to flow into narrow main channels and increasing water availability during the dry season, Bangladesh Live News reported.
Several experts in Bangladesh criticized China’s plan as impractical and doomed to failure. The Teesta River is 5 kilometers wide and its main channel is divided in two by islands. Chinese engineers want to force it into a narrow channel about a kilometer wide.
Experts point out that trying to straighten braided rivers increases water velocity to potentially unmanageable levels.
The river, with its many creeks and islands, has developed over thousands of years. It will be a constant struggle to maintain a riverbed more than five kilometers wide in a single deep channel that is only one kilometer wide, according to Bangladesh Live News.
Mohammad Azaz, chairman of the Dhaka-based Center for River and Delta Studies, has been critical of the Chinese-sponsored project. One of his concerns is who will receive the benefits of the reclaimed land. Building an industrial zone will not do any good for residents along the river other than finding jobs as temporary workers in industrial projects. According to Bangladesh Live News, the government and the construction industry will benefit the most.
The environmental impact of this infrastructure dredging was not clearly stated in the project report. Environmental impact assessments and environmental management plans for proposed projects are considered opaque. Environmental lawyers in Bangladesh noted that details of the project have not been shared with the public or academics for debate. Details of the proposed structural interventions and loan terms remain unknown. It is unclear how environmentally sustainable the project is, according to Bangladesh Live News.
The project was first mooted after Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Bangladesh in 2016, when Dhaka and Beijing signed agreements for a series of BRI projects. A non-binding memorandum of understanding for the project was signed in September 2016 between the Bangladesh Water Development Board and Chinese state-owned China Power Construction Corporation. PowerChina then submitted a seemingly top-secret master plan and feasibility study, but in Dhaka.
Chinese Ambassador to Bangladesh Li Jiming, in an attempt to bring the Teesta management project back into the spotlight, visited the Teesta River Basin area in October 2022, saying that PowerChina engineers were inspecting the work area. However, he sensed that Bangladesh had reservations about the proposed Chinese project.
Speaking at a seminar in Dhaka on October 13, 2022, he said Bangladesh was “a little bit reluctant about the project. The reason, of course, is that we felt some sensitivities” and cited fears of the “Chinese” debt trap”.
In July 2020, the Bangladesh Ministry of Water Resources sent a letter to the Bangladesh Economic Relations Department to mobilize resources for the country’s economic development and seek a loan of about US$1 billion from China for the Teesta River Comprehensive Treatment and Restoration Project and the renewal of the pending memorandum of understanding; 85% of the project cost came from Chinese loans.
However, according to Dhaka media reports, among Bangladeshi policymakers, Sri Lanka and Pakistan’s dire situation after signing loan agreements with Chinese entities is seriously affecting the acceptance of Chinese projects.
More sensible voices have suggested that India should be approached to build reservoirs or water storage facilities along the Teesta stretch to control flooding during monsoons and provide water to the river basin during the dry season. (Arnie)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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