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dam-l LS: River Dykes Bring Sorrow In South Asia
HEADLINES: River Dykes Bring Sorrow In South Asia
--------------
February 25 - Originally posted in IGC member conference: ips.english
March 1, 1999 Date: February 24, 1999
Posted by: newsdesk@igc.org
+ Greenpeace /* Written 2:38 PM Feb 24, 1999 by newsdesk@igc.org
in ips.english */
Calls For /* ---------- "ENVIRONMENT-SOUTH ASIA: River Dykes"
---------- */
Nat'l Import
Bans On GE Copyright 1999 InterPress Service, all rights
reserved.
Crops Worldwide distribution via the APC networks.
+ Enviros *** 21-Feb-99 ***
Support Legal
Challenge To Title: ENVIRONMENT-SOUTH ASIA: River Dykes Bring Sorrow
"No
Surprises" By Mahesh Uniyal
Guarantees
PRAKASHPUR, (Nepal), Feb (IPS) - Standing atop a
high river
+ Suit Filed embankment, Durga Prasad Paudel recalls better days
when the Kosi
To Protect flowed freely past this village in the southern
plains of Nepal.
Northern
Goshawk In Not many years ago farmers in the surrounding countryside,
Western close to the border with India, could harvest three
different
States crops a year. ''Now we are lucky to get one. Our
fields have been
spoilt by seeping water,'' says the 62-year-old
peasant, pointing
+ Otter-Wing to the water-logged land behind the earthen wall.
Defenders
Trials And The dyke was built many years ago to protect the
people and
Sentences their farms from the Kosi when it spills over into
large areas
towards the end of the monsoon rains.
+ Ruling
Upholds Right But Paudel and other locals say the dyke is robbing their
To Limit lands of nourishment brought down from the mountains
by the
Cattle river. As it tumbles down the Himalayas and across
the narrow
Grazing On mountain gorges, the Kosi picks up huge amounts of
sediment which
Public Lands it spreads on the flood plains of southern Nepal and
north India.
+ River Dykes Instead of fertilising the fields, the rich alluvium
is now
Bring Sorrow piling up on the embanked river bed, which, locals
say, is about
In South Asia ten feet higher than the land behind the dyke.
Travelling along the mud track on top of the over 20
km long
+ PANUPS: embankment, one can see only marshy land on the side
meant to be
Endosulfan protected by the wall.
Residues
Found In The water logging is the result of excess rain water
failing to
Australian drain into the river. Moreover, the continuously
rising river bed
Beef results in water seeping through the embankment, say
experts.
+ New Report What is happening in Prakashpur is a typical example
of short-
Shows sighted efforts to tame the mighty Himalayan rivers
which criss-
Pesticides cross Nepal, parts of north India and Bangladesh, say
critics of
Overlooked In the massive embankment building programme in the last two
Salmon nations.
Declines
''We cannot stop floods. We cannot fight with water.
We should
+ Report Says learn the art of living with rivers,'' asserts Vijay
Kumar of the
Bigger Is Freedom from Flood Campaign which is working to
educate people
Better When and policy makers in India's flood-prone state of Bihar.
It Comes To
Forests It is Bihar, India's second most populous state,
which bears
the brunt of the Kosi's flood fury every year. The
river is also
+ New Battles known as the 'Sorrow of Bihar' and enters the eastern
Indian
To Begin Soon state about 25 km from Prakashpur.
In The WTO
The Kosi is one of several large rivers flowing down
from the
+ Report Sees Himalayas in Nepal to join the Ganges in Bihar and
flow onwards
Increased to Bangladesh before draining into the Bay of Bengal.
Lending For Every year, these rivers overflow, causing widespread
damage in
Destructive north India and Bangladesh.
Projects
According to Kumar who along with Bangladeshi, Indian and
+ Drillbits & Nepalese journalists and South Asian river experts,
travelled
Tailings: along the Kosi embankment from Prakashpur into Bihar,
the mud
Mexican walls are a ''mindless adoption'' of Western flood control
Strike measures.
Threatened By
Army The people of Prakashpur had learnt to live with the
annual
cycle of floods. Their houses are built on stilts.
The elderly
recall how in the old days farmers grew different
varieties of
'flood tolerant' rice suited to different levels of
the flood
plain. Some types could withstand submergence of up
to 1.5 metres.
[ Headlines Critics claim that the over 20,000 km of embankments
along the
Archive ] Himalayan rivers built in India and Bangladesh, have
little to
show by way of flood control and improving farm
productivity.
A far better way to control floods is by improving
the natural
drainage channels of rivers. According to Bangladeshi
water
expert Emaduddin Ahmad, the 1998 floods in
Bangladesh, said to be
the worst this century, were aggravated by man made
structures --
railway lines, bridges and roads -- which blocked the
passage of
the water.
Flood waters also took much longer to recede because the
embankments have raised the river beds.
An embankment construction spree soon after the
departure of
British colonial rulers from the subcontinent in 1947, has
'jacketed' large stretches of rivers like the Kosi in
eastern and
northeastern India and Bangladesh.
According to estimates published by the New
Delhi-based Centre
for Science and Environment (CSE), Bihar spent over Rs 12
billion between the 1950s and late 1980s on the
construction and
upkeep of nearly 3,500 km of river embankments.
But the flood prone area in the state has increased
from 2.5
million hectares to 6.4 million hectares during this
period.
Despite the dykes, Bihar witnessed what is described
as its worst
flood this century in 1987.
Likewise, Bangladesh has nearly 8,000 km of
embankments built
in the past 40 years. More are planned under the
ambitious Flood
Action Plan (FAP), launched ten years ago with the
backing of 11
donor nations and four multilateral agencies.
Critics of embankments, dispute their main
justification --
saving farm losses from floods and better crop
yields. On the
contrary floods are beneficial for farming and
fisheries, they
argue.
A study published by the Panos Institute, London and the
Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies, found that
the floods
which devastated that country in 1987 and 1988 and
led to the
FAP, were followed by bumper harvests.
This was due to the silt brought to the fields by the
floods.
''Along with increased soil moisture and availability
of water
for irrigation later in the year (this) led to
unusually good
harvests, which agronomists say outweighed crop
losses suffered
in the floods,'' notes the study, titled 'Rivers of Life'.
Floods also ''recharge underground water supplies,
replenish
soils with nutrient and provide breeding and feeding
grounds for
fish, the most important source of animal protein in
the diet of
the common people (in large parts of Bangladesh and
eastern
India),'' it adds.
The study, which probed the impact of embankments in
Bangladesh, documents examples of Bangladeshi farmers
whose lands
were spoilt by the walls and recorded declining yields.
Embankments are favoured because they allow crops to
be grown
even during the flood season. But a study of farm
yields across
India found the lowest in north Bihar, showng little
increase
from the levels in the 1960s when the dykes were
being built.
Likewise, statistics compiled in the Panos study show that
there has been only a marginal increase in monsoon crop in
Bangladesh. It quotes foreign experts hired under FAP
to evaluate
existing flood control efforts, as saying that the
embankments
had endangered fisheries.
One of the experts furnished ''evidence that the
biodiversity
of fish species is greatly reduced by the
embankments, a loss
which can never be compensated for by aquaculture.''
Another
expert said, ''when embankments are built, the loss
of fish
more than offsets any projected gain in crop production.''
''Floods never killed us. It is flood control which
is killing
us,'' Bangladeshi peasants interviewed for the study
were quoted
as saying.
Paradoxically, embankments have even increased the
danger of
floods, say critics. The walls prevent smaller
tributaries from
joining the main river and the former cause flooding
inside the
embanked area.
Millions of people in Bihar living in areas falling
inside the
embankments along different rivers, face flooding
caused by rain
water trapped between the dykes.
Breaches in the embankments are common and a serious
threat.
These are often caused by shoddy construction, itself
a result of
alleged widespread corruption in awarding the
lucrative deals to
build the structures.
A rupture in the Kosi embankment in Bihar, some 75 km
from the
India-Nepal border in September 1984, flooded nearly
half a
million people out of their houses. (END/IPS/mu/rdr/99)
Origin: Montevideo/ENVIRONMENT-SOUTH ASIA/
----
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