Four hundred million people--if it were a country, it would be the third largest in the world--rely on the Ganges River and its tributaries for their livelihood. Six thousand rivers provide a perennial source of irrigation and power to one of the world’s most densely populated and poorest areas. The Himalayas, “the water tower of the Ganges,” provide 45 percent of the annual flow. These facts represent the potential payoffs to the populations of Bangladesh, India and Nepal as well as the threat that climate change poses to poor and already vulnerable people of these countries.
A recent visit gave me a clear picture of both the potential and risks of this mighty river system. Regulating water through reservoir storage in Nepal could potentially lower flood peaks and prevent the worst flood shocks in its own lowlands, the northern Indian states and Bangladesh. Nearly fifty million farmers could benefit from higher dry-season flows. Estimated conservatively, Nepal sits on a hydropower resource of 83,000 MW. Meanwhile, its southern neighbor India, growing at over 8 percent a year, is thirsty for clean energy.
In the Rolwaling Valleyabout 20 miles southwest of Mount Everest, I made an aerial tour of Tsho Rolpa, the largest glacial lake in Nepal, formed over the last 40 years as the Tarkarding glacier stagnated, melted and retreated. At about 15,000 feet, the lake, which is over two miles long and up to 500 feet deep, continues to expand. An unstable natural moraine dam retains the lake. The current risk is high that the dam will burst. A catastrophic out flow will occur, devastating villages, farmlands, infrastructures and taking thousands of lives downstream. This tour provided us with a harsh reminder that the Himalayas contain the largest body of ice outside the Polar Regions but also present the fastest glacier retreat of any mountain range, with potentially catastrophic consequences for the region, in particular in the dry season.
From Tsho Rolpa, we flew south along the Tama Koshi River to Kirne where we toured the Khimti Hydropower Plant. A relatively environmentally-friendly project, it is a “run of the river” scheme--there is no dam at the intake, the technology is quite impressive, and the entire operation is run by a control room operated with a supervisor and operator (no personnel inside the power plant). The power plant contains five turbines that generate a combined 60 MW of electricity. A whole community lives on site, with a private school, a clinic, and a fire department. The school has about 430 students, of which 130 are children of the plant’s employees and the rest are from the local community. All classes are taught in English, and the school has recently expanded through grade 10.
From Kirne, we followed the Tama Koshi River south to the Koshi barrage. Built in 1964, the purpose of the barrage is to provide irrigation through manmade canals to India and Nepal (through the Western Koshi Main Canal). India built the barrage on Nepali territory under a treaty signed in 1954 and still controls the opening of the 56 gates during the rainy season.
As David Grey, the World Bank’s Senior Adviser on Water Resource Management points out, Nepal’s water assets are unique and world-class. It needs world-class capacity to manage them, so the country can have domestic prosperity, peace and growth. Nepal is also the linchpin to regional cooperation and benefit-sharing, something that has eluded South Asia--the least integrated region of the world--in the past. Perhaps climate change can provide the much-needed trigger to opening this dialogue.
The well-being of four hundred million poor people is at stake. Helping Nepal, Bangladesh and India develop this river basin for improved power, irrigation and disaster management is one of the most exciting challenges of my career.
Thu, 07/24/2008 - 07:06 Interesting approach. In Bangladesh poverty seems strongly correlated with the major rivers. It also requires a regional rather than country approach but existing insturments appear weak. Though long-established SAARC seems to have achieved little A related approach would also be to promote the unified case of South Asia. Although the largest numbers of poor and marginalised live in South Asia, the argument of leading insitutions and donors seems to be to focus primarily on Sub-Saharan Africa leaving South Asia's poor to benefit not through aid but trickle-down. it's difficult to find simple stats to make this case so would be good to see - on these pages - some S Asia-wide stats to justify this
Thu, 03/13/2008 - 16:11 The nature and scope, and prospects and problems, of the development of Ganges River Basin, a habitat, and home, for nearly half a billion people, are truly enormous but are particularly so in planning for, and implementation of, such development efforts as noted by Mr. Praful Patel. When put in place properly, no doubt, the blueprint of such a development will comprehensively address the issues of poverty alleviation, through planned enhancement of income and employment amongst the inhabitants of the Ganges River Basin in the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors of the rural economy. However, the devil is in the detail of “how” this will be accomplished, and not in “what” and “why” of it. The issues at stake, while preparing the blueprint at the ground level, are varied besides water resources, environment, and regional cooperation in the three South Asian countries of Nepal, India and Bangladesh. Prominently, these are related to topography, infrastructure, and governance that would ultimately govern the addressing successfully “the challenge” that Mr. Patel has thrown to himself, and to us who are involved in the issues of development of South Asia. Topographically, Nepal, India, and Bangladesh are vastly different. Within a width of barely three hundred miles, from the crest of the Himalayan Ranges, the waters of the snow fed river of these countries “plunge” from an altitude of about 20,000’ above sea level close to the sea level itself. The heaviest impact of this “plunge” is felt in Nepal with concomitant issues of landslides, soil erosion, defoliation, and, of course, destruction of natural habitat of animals and human beings. No less devastating is the impact of flooding downstream in the lower reaches of the Himalayan Rivers both in India and in Bangladesh. The World Bank needs to prepare plans that will “tame” the snow fed rivers of Nepal, to use their natural force to generate hydro-electric power in the Himalayan foothills of Nepal, and to distribute its waters, and hydro-electric power, in the valleys and plains for agricultural purposes in Nepal, India and Bangladesh. Infrastructurally, it is obvious that this topography makes it extremely difficult any effort to “tame” the rivers in the higher altitudes. Thus, planning for the construction of roads leading up to the potential sites of power generation, and for the devising of irrigation systems, that would “feed” water from the snow fed rivers (which have perennial water flows) into those rivers deriving their water from rain (which have seasonal water flows), that are located on the southern periphery of the Ganges River Basin, becomes of critical and central to any development effort. When this happens, it would truly allow the peninsular rivers of South Asia to be able to irrigate their own river basins more efficiently even in the dry season, and to obtain clean energy for value addition to their agricultural and non-agricultural economic activities. From the point of view of governance of such development in the Ganges River Basin, the issues are no less insurmountable in the short run. For example, planning for the establishment of run-of-the-river hydro-power stations, and the extension of the mini-grid power system elsewhere in Nepal, India, and Bangladesh; the establishment and/or renovation of an irrigation canal systems of the Himalayan, and the peninsular rivers; the establishment and/or renovation of a barrage system that will control the flow of water in the low lying, and densely populated, areas of India and Bangladesh; and the establishment of road network that will carry both goods and services up and down, the Ganges River Basin, can be considered as priority areas of attention in governing these complex structures. The requirement of person power needed is huge to run and maintain these irrigation and road systems which would have to include issues of capacity-strengthening as well at national, regional, and district levels. The issues of implementation, however, are even more insurmountable since governments, and civil services, of three sovereign countries will share the natural bounty of the Ganges River Basin. It is possible, and I would venture to say that it is probable, that (i) with access to water guaranteed over the entire year in place, with a strong possibility with the linking of snow-fed rivers of the Himalayan Ranges, and rain-fed rivers of the peninsular India; (ii) with main irrigation systems and subsidiary irrigation systems in place; (iii) with barrages renovated, and mini-barrages in place; (iv) with generation of electricity from the natural flow of water in the high altitude Nepal and distribution of that electricity where it is needed in both high altitude and low altitude areas; (iv) with access roads and other transport network in place; (v) with agricultural services, value-adding services, and institutions of governance, and their strengthened capacities, in place; and (vi) with issues of inter-governmental collaboration resolved between the three sovereign States, it is not entirely impossible that the challenge thrown down by Mr. Patel can be met successfully. But all of that will require a good deal of detailed planning, a will to stay the course in the face of all kinds of obstacles, and the realization that the challenge may not be successfully met in our own lifetime. There is no harm, however, in beginning to pursue this excellent idea now otherwise only piece meal, and not comprehensive, approaches to poverty reduction, emanating even from the World Bank, will continue to carry the day without the nearly half a billion poor people of the Ganges River Basin benefiting from such approaches in our life time. In order to pursue this challenge seriously, it would be worthwhile for the World Bank to bring in other interested parties to the table when discussing these issues since I know that there is a good deal of experience outside of the World Bank that can help it meet the challenge in collaboration with them. Sudhir Wanmali, Ph.D. (Cantab).
Mon, 03/10/2008 - 12:38 I’d like to add something with reference to Mr Praful’s posting. I fully agree with his keywords “power”, “irrigation” and “disaster management”. From an opportunistic point of view those population are ‘rich’ if we consider natural (potential) power resources but, as an old Italian advertising was quoting, “power is nothing without control”. In my opinion, the ‘control’ can be raised up by educating the new generation on how to use this resources (i.e. energy management, energy technology, power production methods etc) and of course providing them with appropriate financial support and tools. It might be a utopia but the potential is there. Coming on the ‘irrigation’ problem, I remember my past days as coordinator of an Europe-India network on rice, we discovered the growing interest of European companies in starting activities in Bangladesh, India and Nepal but the poor infrastructure was the main problem. Infrastructure = business, can we validate this? What do you think? On the disaster management I’d like to mention the GALILEO projects funded by the European Space Agency for disaster management applications but, again, training of the personnel and technicians was not that much exploited. We again close the circle of power and control. I hope my comment can help discussion. Regards.
Sun, 03/09/2008 - 02:01 I would like to thank Mr Patel for realizing the rivers as the key resource base connected with both future problems and prospect of cooperation in the region. The idea of building dam and managing water for energy, flood management and irrigation has been on the floor for long time, mostly advocated by smaller countries of the region. However, India probably never picked the idea. On the other hand, we know that India is working positively to divert waters of big rivers without consultation with the downstream riparian countries. Mr Patel must be aware of the adverse effects of the Farraka barrage on the Southwest Gages dependent area of Bangalsdeh. There are a considerable number of research and studies in Bangladesh regarding the severe socio-economic, envioronmental and ecological impacts on the southwest region of the country. This is more due to lack of basin-wide (upstream-downstream) integrated planning and management of the project rather than presence of the barrage itself. Any conscious person in the region may ask the big donors of similar projects why they are not effectively aware of such disasters. By this time the impacts of climate change are well recocgnized. We know about the unceratin future of water resources in the region which would aggravate the poverty level of the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna basins. With this background Mr Patels thoughts on only the Ganges River is very interesting for water management in the basin scale. This is also meaningful due to his responsible position in the international organization. This may be linked with his agency's current stand for large-scale water projects. With such strategy, country like India must have got momentum to go ahead with projects like river-linking. However, with Mr patel's article gives us hope that he wants basin-wide river management. This could be the most heroic and humanatarian job for a large poor population in the region. Again it's not only the Ganges basin, other basins (Brahmaputra and Meghna) should also be considered. Anyone who could do this could be next Prof. Yunus from South Asia.
Sat, 03/08/2008 - 02:30 Ganga is the pulse for north and west india and bangla desh. if Ganga is pure then our community pure and the polution of Ganga also poluted all the ecosystem. first of all we need to prevent the pollution in Ganga because gangatic water is the largest resourse of irrigation and drinking water. Ganga also provide habitate for a large noumber of biodiversity. so we dont need to setup big water treatment plant while we need to setup small water treatment plant because the polution in Ganga enter in every village and city which situated on the bank of Ganga. and also need to awair the people for the prevention of polution in Ganga. Ganga can provide us a large quantity of hydro power if we setup big project likee tihiri dam then it would be time consuming and contrversial if we invite all the small activist group and village society to setup some small project on the rivers according to the requarment of local regions. due to that the coast also decreased and the managment also essy. now we commited to ourself that we will try to utalized the Ganga for infinite time and holly Ganga river should be holly for future. sATISH BHARDWAJ +91-9927004241
Sat, 03/08/2008 - 01:58 Climate change is an Inconvenient Truth . its only going to stop when we aware the people and mass of Public about its fact.As in india all beaurocrates talks only but not works on that.they are even not involving youths for certain programme .there are so many youths who are dealing with awareness campaign individually without any source and money .thats is because they realy care for mother earth and planet.this is a time to act not talk, so act now try to aware mass public about stop using fossil fuels ,save energy,use recyclable products, try to reduce the use of plastic bags and use cloth bag,there are so many modules and parts by which we can participate public and youth to fight against climate change and disasters